


Lethe and Philautia

by sprx77



Category: Naruto, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Alternate Naruto Chapter 699, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Mineta Minoru Doesn't Exist, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, BAMF Hyuuga Hinata, Bakugou Mitsuki tries to hit Katsuki once. Once., Coming Out, F/F, F/M, Good Parent Midoriya Inko, Hinata puts a HARD stop to that one, Identity Issues, Intersex Shinsou Hitoshi, Izuku is Hinata, M/M, Reincarnation, Shinsou Hitoshi Replaces Mineta Minoru, Trans Bakugou Katsuki, Trans Female Character, Trans Female Midoriya Izuku, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:01:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26402320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprx77/pseuds/sprx77
Summary: Hyuuga Hinata banged her elbow on the table when she was two years old and it hurt more than anything she'd experienced in her short life.It jolted her out of the incomplete Lethe, the dark water of reincarnation that hosted her adult consciousness.She woke, groggy and unfamiliar and in a babe's body, and by instinct touched her own chakra. It didn't react. Hinata blinked, confused and hurt, but she kick-started her tiny chakra system anyway.From then on, every time she opened her eyes, entirely uncognizant of what was happening, she once more reached for her chakra. Each time she found still more and more waiting for her.She chases after Kacchan and she sticks leaves to her arms. She cuddles with her mom and sticks her shoes to the bottom of her feet. She does every chakra control exercise she knows and waits, patiently, for the time when she doesn't fall back asleep.
Relationships: Bakugou Katsuki & Midoriya Izuku, Hyuuga Hinata/Yamanaka Ino, Midoriya Inko & Midoriya Izuku, Midoriya Izuku & Shinsou Hitoshi, Midoriya Izuku & Yagi Toshinori | All Might
Comments: 181
Kudos: 840
Collections: Best of Fanfiction, Identity Crisis, Reincarnation and Transmigration





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Memories_of_the_Shadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memories_of_the_Shadows/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really shouldn't be posting this as a WIP, but I really wanted to post something! I thrive off that sweet, sweet validation.
> 
> Philautia: one of the seven types of love used in Ancient Greece, usually used in the context defined as "love of self" or "regard for one's own happiness or advantage", which has been conceptualized as a basic human necessity since antiquity.

Hinata’s first experiences in this new life are like precious sips of air, brief flashes of clarity and relief before she’s sinking back down into the depths. She likens it to drowning without the pain, the desperation. There’s only confusion and a heavy, indominable sleep.

She gets bits and pieces.

Her elbow, banging into a table and hurting like nothing else had ever hurt, staring down at herself like she’s not in her own body; like a ghost looking on.

A computer, warm keys under her clumsy fingers, as she makes what limited and familiar searches she can, delighted when she finds what she was looking for.

The glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, blinking down at her, when she wakes up swaddled within incredibly soft blankets, eyes and thoughts blurry with sleep.

She spends so much time under water, unaware of anything. She can only think, or feel, when she unexpectedly surfaces, and then it’s very much like her face breaching the air; her cheeks feel oversensitive and cold, like she’s forgotten what the wind felt like; her hands are small and uncoordinated; she looks at everything as if with new eyes, blinking unsteady and slow.

Before she can think much of anything, the waves lap at her and she finds herself sleeping in the dark.

The woman appears the most.

Mostly sense memories at first, gentle yet disjointed in time: soft hands catching her when she’s about to fall, a solid weight against her back as they read together, an uncalloused palm ruffling through her hair, a warm smile.

Then sense-feelings. Soft lips to her forehead, comforting. A cautioning hand on her shoulder, the gentle squeeze to reassure. Soapy hot hands tugging a loofah all over her, water splashing, high laughter echoing off the ceiling, bright with uncomplicated joy.

A hug, safe.

Through a gray haze Hinata can see her; silent memories washing by. She’s still surrounded on all sides by the deep waters, head fuzzy—well. Everything fuzzy, because she’s not breathing, not really there. Everything she sees now is like an old movie, faded around the edges.

A woman moving through their little kitchen, busily preparing a meal. The same woman smiling at her when she returns home from somewhere—the Academy? The woman turns and opens up her arms, a confident invitation, and Hinata runs forward into them, grinning ear to ear.

The memories taper off, lulled once more into perfect dark, the soft warm dark, and she sleeps.

New sensations wake her up.

The feel of her small finger writing through the steam on the bathroom mirror, her small body curiously perched atop the counter. Hinata blinks in surprise, watching hazily as she draws a smiling face. A voice calls out to her, the name unfamiliar, yet she turns anyway—

Hinata is carrying a basket. It’s a familiar basket. She thinks she’s never seen it before. Her hands know its shape. She knows who it’s for.

It’s an effort to shuffle until she can both hold her mission objective steady _and_ reach to knock on the white door with her small fist. She manages.

“Hello, Izu-kun!” She blinks wide eyes at the unfamiliar aunty, expressive face beaming as it always does. “Is that from your mom?”

She finds her voice, the answer already waiting on her tongue.

“Yeah!” Her smile stretches her face. “It’s pork buns, see?”

The towel over the basket shifts, warm steam wafting up to them. It smells good. It smells like home, except for how it doesn’t.

Hinata turns her face against the water, floating onwards. She is curled up, yet not cold. She can feel her heart beat.

 _Izu-kun_. Her thoughts wrap around the name and tug it down, down, down into the dark.

When next she pulls her aching eyelids open, she’s still in the water. It takes her an embarrassingly long time to realize they’re swimming.

Another boy—wait, but that’s?—

A boy is treading water across from her, a big smile on his face. He splashes her with a sweeping motion, makes a baby wave that washes harmlessly against her shoulders. She blinks at him.

“Come on, ‘Zuku.” He is closer. He tugs her hand. She thinks about fighting, but this too is familiar. She allows herself to be pulled through the shallow water.

Their mothers are waiting on the shore.

Hinata’s head plunges under the waves.

“’Zuku’s it!” The blonde child shrieks, hand leaving Hinata’s arm. He’s already running, back turned toward her. She stares at the line of his shoulders, the orange shirt he’s wearing.

It’s like he’s running in slow motion.

There are other children around, blurry and indistinct; at the shout they scatter, high peals of laughter filling the—clearing? No, the wide open field ringed with trees.

 _A park_ , some untapped vein of knowledge whispers, _The park next to my school_.

It’s a Sunday.

And then it’s nothing.

She scrapes her knee. Hinata blinks down at it, hardly understanding. She touches the bubbled blood, not quite enough to flow, and back at the dirt now bearing small traces of her DNA.

DNA is something she’d learned about last week, little bits and pieces of people that get left behind wherever they go. Her mother is good about explaining those things, at walking her through the hard concepts when they watch the news together.

It doesn’t hurt as much as her elbow hitting the table, or the full-body bruising she remembers from—

More flashes. Hanabi, rushing at her, a thousand times if she’d done it once, in the familiar training hall. Neji, taking her sister’s place, coming at Hinata with the same style. The images overlap until they paint a different picture: Hinata lunging back, a dancing exchange of blows, forms flowing in sweeping motions like the tide against the shore.

Her mother’s hands settle over her shoulders, tone worried. Hinata looks up with tears in her eyes. It doesn’t really hurt, but it stings, and something settles in her chest when her mother soothes her, a gentle cream for the cut and a gentle hand stroking her hair and murmuring that everything will be all right.

Hinata blinks awake in the middle of the school day, Kacchan coloring enthusiastically beside her. She keeps the crayon in her grip as she finishes the drawing of her family that was almost finished. Seven figures look back at her, already colored in: her mother, her father, Hinata herself, and four others grinning with black-crayon smiles. Hanabi, Neji, Kiba, Shino.

She draws in Akamaru with a yellow crayon, the closest thing she has to his soft, cream fur.

Kacchan leans over, wrinkling his nose at her in confusion.

“You don’t got a dog, ‘Zuku!”

Hinata hums.

“I know.” She looks mournfully at the edges of her paper. There’s no room for Sensei or anyone else, which is sad, but there’s something even more important missing. A niggling concern that becomes stronger the more she thinks about it.

She looks at the yellow crayon in her hand and wonders what it is, the blank space next to crayon-Hinata in the little line up.

Her shoulders fall into warm water, swallowing up her hair and face; it sweeps wet along her thighs and her feet float, toes wiggling, until she’s so deep that the sun no longer shines through the water. She closes her eyes to the black around her.

And sleeps.

Kacchan shakes her awake, tugging on her shirt sleeve excitedly.

They’re on a bridge of some kind.

Hinata peers over the edge, the wood barely reaching her nose. She can’t see much, but last time they were here she didn’t clear the railing at _all_.

“I can see a frog over there!” Kacchan delights, pointing into the distance. He wasn’t able to see over, either, last time.

They’re growing.

Hinata keeps her eyes open as she sinks down, watching the sun disappear, the water blue and clear until its not. Her hair dances around her, long and swaying against the current.

When her mother asks her about a hair cut, Hinata shakes her head tightly.

It causes one of their rare fights.

Eventually, Hinata shuts down, cradling the rare spark of defiance. She looks down at the floor, expecting pain, humiliation—

It doesn’t come.

Her mother has never hit her, but then again it had been rare for her father to hit her, as well; it was disgraceful. More often than not he had Hanabi do it for him, trying to toughen her up, to change her, to temper into the fine blade he’d always wanted; less demure and more steel. It hadn’t worked then.

“Again.” He called, until she couldn’t force herself to her feet anymore, and it was disappointment that suffused the room. Disappointment and ugly pride as her soft little sister grew impatient, frustrated, and unhappy.

That was fine; as much of a disgrace as Hinata was, at least Hanabi had never _hurt_ , had never struggled to crawl off the ground over and over again under the harsh eyes of their only parent, beaten and bruised.

If Hinata won their spars, the “Again.” would be for Hanabi and just as disappointed. Their father still looked at Hanabi like a treasure. She wouldn’t allow that gaze to grow cold.

A gentle hand touched her face and she flinched back, regretting it instantly as she forced her muscles back under control. Concerned eyes shifted to surprise, worry.

“Are you going to force me?” Hinata asked softly, unable to meet those eyes. She made herself small, arms tucked against her side, but spine stiff. She waited for the inevitable.

“ _Force—_ Izu, honey, _no_.” She’s pulled in against mom’s soft everything, hugged close to a warm body. Comfort floods through her, unexpected, tingly. Her hair is stroked and Hinata can’t even help it when the tears start, overflowing from her tiny eyes.

She tries to keep the sounds back but that doesn’t work, either. Mom makes soft, sweet noises, petting her until the hitching sobs abate and then leaning back to look at her with nothing resembling disappointment in her expression.

“Oh, sweetie.” Mom sighs a little. “If we don’t cut your hair, it’s going to grow into your eyes and make it hard to see, baby. We’ll have to clip it back until your bangs grow out.”

Hinata looks up, truly surprised for the first time in—

The edges of the thought blur out of focus, sand between her fingers.

“You won’t make me cut it?” She blinks, a new rush of tears starting up. She can’t imagine fighting, except she probably would, coming awake to a flurry of limbs as she struggled against adult hands holding her down, keeping her _still_ , cutting her hair and changing her body until she looks right, acceptable, correct.

Somewhere along the way she’d learned not to bend _or_ break, to stand firm as herself, and she finds herself thinking of the yellow crayon and the person-sized space left for someone in the drawing of her family.

Yes, she’d fight.

“I’m not ever going to hold you down, Izuku.” Mom says, a very serious look on her kind face. She strokes Hinata’s hair. “Sometimes I have to protect you, so I might pick you up or grab your arm, to stop you from getting hurt, but nobody should ever grab you and hold you down, or make you do something you don’t want to do. Do you understand?”

Hinata blinked big, solemn eyes at her.

“Yes.” She said, because this was something she knew well. The knowledge came to her like an old friend, like a kunai hilt worn soft with use.

 _If someone puts their hands on you, take them off_.

It was one of the first lessons they learned in Kunoichi classes, before flowers or poison or how to see what they needed to see in a male Shinobi, the specific dangers that they—on the way to being Genin, and adults in the eyes of the law, but still so goddamn small and soft— _always_ needed to watch out for.

Later that day—she doesn’t know how she knows, but it’s the same day—Hinata stares at the glow-in-the-dark ceiling and remembers the details of those lessons.

_If you say ‘no’ and they don’t listen, cut first and ask questions never. Push raw chakra through your hands; use any weapon you can find. Bite, scream, claw. Find an Uchiha on the walls. Find an ANBU in the shadows. Find a kunoichi, anywhere in this village, and stay with her until you’re safe. But if you can’t—if you’re stuck or trapped—fight for your life._

You _are more important than anything else, and never let anyone tell you otherwise. Nobody touches you without your permission. Nobody gets anything from you that you don’t want to give. Not here, not on a mission, not even your friends or family. That works for_ everything, _too. Nobody is owed your time, your attention, or your body. Not a single damn person. Got that?_

Kunoichi classes had gone on and on, years of lessons tucked neatly under their floral crowns and soft ribbons, but that had been the first: the autonomy of a kunoichi.

Self-worth, respect, and choice.

She flexed her little hands against the covers.

Kurenai-sensei had given them that lesson, one of countless rotating kunoichi called in to teach their relative specialties by the Academy. Hinata had remembered. She’d never forgotten.

The first time Kacchan raises a hand to punch her shoulder, Hinata snaps awake and catches his wrist in a textbook throw. She drops her body weight and _yanks_ in the direction of his momentum, sending him flying a few feet and blinking, wide-eyed, in the grass.

“I’m not going to let you hit me, Kacchan!” She stomps her foot, fists clenched. “You shouldn’t hit anyone!”

“It’s just play fighting!” The blonde boy protests. He brow crinkles. “It doesn’t hurt anyone.”

“Well I don’t like it.” She stares him down, until he’s twitchy and uncomfortable. He huffs, standing up and brushing off the grass.

“Okay.” The boy pouts. “That’s okay. I won’t try to hit you, ‘Zuku.”

She smiles at him, small and sweet.

“Good!”

“But we’re gonna get in fights like, a lot, when we’re heroes!” He continues, undaunted, arms swinging high while they walk. “So we gotta learn to fight, you know? Heroes fight the bad guys!”

“Kacchan!” She huffs, reaching out to hold his hand. He gives it without thought. “They’re gonna teach us that in school. You can’t hit anybody. That’s how you _know_ it’s a bad guy. Heroes don’t hit anyone that’s not villains.”

The words take on a fuzzy aura, as if spoken from far away.

She fights against the weight pulling her down. The light fades slower, this time, sound still reaching her.

“Well, well—” A hand squeezing hers. “Heroes gotta learn to fight with other heroes! The TV said so, yanno! They train and train until they’re the biggest and strongest like A—”

Black.

Kacchan’s hands crackle and pop. He stares in excited awe, all but jumping up and down.

“Don’t worry, Izuku!” Kacchan breathes out, still breathless with joy hours later. “I’m sure your quirk will come soon. Then we can be the strongest!”

She takes his hand, smiling back.

The water.

Mom buys Hinata new clothes regularly. Pants, shirts, overalls; shorts, shoes, socks with all manner of super-heroes printed on the sides. She buys her underwear and hair clips, jackets and scarves.

But when they prepare to go out of town for a festival, mom buys her a yukata and spreads it casually across Hinata’s bed. She can’t stop touching it.

It’s blue, but pink koi swim across the fabric, interspersed with the occasional branch from a cherry tree, sakura clinging.

It’s so soft. The detail work is finer than she’s used to, especially for such a young child. She never had anything so fine, despite her status.

They go to the festival and enjoy themselves heartily, with booth-games and festival food and even walking up the temple steps to make their offerings. On the way back home, Hinata falls asleep against her mother’s arms.

She dreams of lapping waves.

Hinata doesn’t really want to take off the yukata. It’s very fine, of course, but it’s also soft and feminine and she loves the way it feels against her skin. So she keeps slipping it on and her mom thinks it’s too cute to stop her.

She wears it until it needs to be washed and then, impatiently, she slips it on again, fingers touching greedily over the soft fabric.

Mom buys her more yukatas.

Anything more would be extravagant for an _extremely_ young child; aunty teases her as it is. But mom always smiles over at Hinata, so _happy_ to see Hinata happy, and hushes her friend with a smile.

“Besides, it’s traditional, you know? A lot of the old traditions are getting swept away under this new technology.”

She gestures at Mitsuki’s jeans and smart phone combo pointedly. Aunty throws her head back and laughs, completely unashamed, and Hinata nearly trips on the playground. Kacchan tags her. She’s “it” yet again, but Hinata doesn’t care. She can only stare at Aunty, eyes wide, as a different blonde woman replaces her for just a moment.

She swallows hard. The waves come fast and strong, roaring in her ears.

Time passes, heavy lids blinking open to bright sunlight, and slipping closed to soft susurrations, to gentle pressing water on all sides.

Hinata has noticed that her time underwater has grown shorter, shallower.

She’s been waking more and more.

Her quirk does not come in.

On the morning of her fourth birthday, Hinata wakes early and crawls into bed with her mom. Inko shifts easily and immediately, making room for her in a way that still makes Hinata’s breath catch in her throat. If she’s ever had this, somewhere amongst her memories of her _first_ mother, she can’t recall; they are sunken too deep to reach.

Mom strokes her hair and listens, quietly, as Hinata stutters and blushes her way through a halting explanation that she is, and always has been, a girl.

She cannot imagine what Hyuuga Hiashi’s response to this would have been; she doesn’t want to try.

Midoriya Inko cries a little, clearly out of sympathy for the tears dripping down Hinata’s face, and cups her round, baby-fat cheek, nodding and comforting her daughter. She thumbs the latest tear away.

“Do you—do you have a name you like, sweetie? A name for my sweet little girl?”

And she knows, just by looking, that her mom is prepared to pull out whatever names she’d considered once, when it was too early to tell what manner of infant quickened in her womb, and Hinata loves her for it.

Hinata starts crying.

It’s sudden, overwhelming, and powerful. She could not have resisted it if she tried. Sobs begotten from too many emotions to name wrack her tiny frame, and her mom hugs her tightly through it all, doesn’t press or prod until Hinata calms down and says, through her own hands:

“Hinata. I’m Hinata.”

Her mom kisses her forehead.

“Midoriya Hinata.” She tries out, speaking into the morning light that spills into the room. The moment seems hushed and magical, as suspended as the dust motes in the arching sunbeams.

“Hello, Hinata.” Her mom says, smiling rather whimsically for someone talking to a four-year-old. “It’s so very nice to meet you.”

Hinata finds herself crying, again, but this time she laughs through hiccups and throws herself at the soft, civilian shoulders that have supported her better than she could have ever imagined.

“Don’t be silly, mom.” She sniffs, voice cracking. “You already love me.”

“Yes, I do.” She smiled, peppering soft kisses all over Hinata’s squealing face. “I love you so very, very much. Nothing can ever change that. You will always be my little one.”

She rests her forehead against Hinata’s.

“You can always tell me anything.” She says, quiet and sincere; she has always treated Hinata like a _person_ , however little she understands at this age, and Hinata loves her for it. “Momma will always be on your side.”

Huh, Hinata thinks, quietly stunned by the magnity of it. That might even be true.

After that, mom still buys her new yukatas every so often.

But she buys Hinata dresses, more.

\--

The first time someone suggests she might be quirkless, Hinata is five years old. She’s almost six. Most of the time she and Kacchan are in their own little world, left alone by the other kids unless there’s some group game going on, and it catches her off guard.

‘So, what is it?’ was answered with ‘I don’t know, yet’ and some child started to speculate that she might not have a quirk, at all. Hinata freezes, more worried about the possibility of peer ostracization than the possibility that she might not get a quirk.

Kacchan stands up for her, shouting down the other kid. His arms are shaking. She has never seen him more upset.

“She’s not quirkless, you—you—” Sparks mutate into an entire small explosion and Hinata’s moving before she can think, darting in shinobi-fast and shoving Kacchan’s hand out of the kids face.

She’d meant to grab and deflect his arm, but years of training find her hand forming a knife and her fingertips catching his wrist at just the right angle. The blast—much smaller than she’d feared—detonates into the sky. It causes a puff of warm air, hardly anything to worry about.

Red colors her cheeks.

She slips back down under the surf, grateful for the escape.

Later that evening, Kacchan frowns at her. He looks miserable.

“You’re going to get a quirk.” He insists. “We’re going to be amazing heroes. My best friend isn’t some quirkless—”

“Hey.” She speaks, quietly, latching onto one of his hands and cradling it between hers. She maintains eye contact. “There’s nothing wrong with being quirkless.”

“But _you’re not though._ We’re gonna be heroes!”

His lip wobbled.

Hinata frowned at him.

“What’s a quirk got to do with that? Plenty of heroes have quirks that have nothing at all to do with heroics. Some can just, like, change the color of your clothes, or their hair, or other useless stuff. Sure it’s cool and all, but their fighting relies on weapons and gear.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Kacchan insists petulantly. “You’re _not_.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Hinata repeats, frowning. “Whether I am or not. Your value isn’t in your quirk, Kacchan. It’s not what makes you special.”

Kacchan tips forward until they’re kind of hugging and grumbles something into her shoulder.

“It’s kind of what makes me special.” He argues, spitting out a mouthful of fabric.

She shoves his shoulder gently until he’s standing upright again.

“You’d be just as good without it. Just as amazing a hero.” He sniffs at her. She presses on. “I’d still be your best friend. A quirk is just a quirk. It’s _random_ and _arbitrary_ —”

“You sound like a dictionary.” Kacchan complained, not for the first time, and Hinata rolled her eyes hard.

“Say it’s not important.” She insisted, planting both feet and crossing her arms. “Say it right now. I’m not going to let my best friend grow up into the kind of hero who thinks he’s better than everybody just because of his quirk.”

Kacchan boggles at her.

“I’m not _better_ than anyone.” He says, obviously brand new to the concept. “Just because my quirk is the best in our class, and my grades are good, and I’m _smart_ —”

She glares at him.

“I’m not though! That doesn’t make me _better_. I mean, it does, but like—”

He struggles.

“Oh yeah?” She challenges. “What if you were qurikless?”

Horror crosses his expression in a flash but he visibly clamps down on his initial response.

“I guess…” He chews his lip. “Then I guess I’d wanna be a hero anyway. I’d wanna be the best. And… if I don’t have a quirk, I wouldn’t… really have a weakness, you know? Fire quirks are weak to water, water quirks are weak to electric…

“A good hero overcomes those weaknesses, so… I guess I’d work extra hard and be the best hero! I’d still be number one!”

He looks at her with new eyes when she laughs.

“So, I guess if you’re quirkless, it’s not the end of the _whole_ world.” He sighs with exaggerated effect. She beams at him. “You can still be the number _two_ hero if you’re quirkless, I mean.”

“Hey!” She shouts, and he grins quick and roguish before taking off, Hinata racing to catch him.

Her quirk doesn’t come.

She turns six and her mother mentions, very briefly, taking her to a doctor about it.

“That’s dumb.” She insists. “I’ve read the statistics. There’s a million different scenarios that can activate a quirk. I might not have found mine yet. And,” She sets her shoulders, wetting her lips and repeating what she’d said to Kacchan. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Oh?” Her mom tickles her stomach, laughing along with her when she screams. “So you don’t want to be a hero, after all?”

Hinata frees herself with a frown. She has sources, now, statistics she’s compiled, herself, based on the quirk data from the web, on hero forums and the public databases. But she doesn’t want to need them.

“That’s silly, you know.” She huffs. “Anybody can be a hero. It’s not like an unsuitable quirk is any better than no quirk at all. It’s not like you need a quirk to use a gun, or a sword, or a—a—grapple hook.”

She says it with such confidence that even her mom’s worry splashes harmlessly against the resolve, and breaks first.

“If you say so,” Mom muses uncertainly. “That’d be a sight, don’t you think? My little grappling-hook hero, Hinata-chan!”

“ _Mom!”_ She protested, but she was already laughing, even as her mom lifted her high into the air.

Her idle research into quirks had turned into something… a little insane.

She has notebooks filled with analyses.

The difference between chakra and quirks is both entirely stunning and also… not.

People do a lot with what they’re given, twisting their apparent bloodline limits in new and creative ways, making up for lack of inherent variety with astonishingly creative techniques.

She is fairly certain speed, strength and martial arts can counter most of them, though.

They heckle their mothers into signing them up for a martial arts class by the time they’re seven. Hinata has a small presentation on the computer. She looked up common concerns, benefits, and statistics with ruthless dedication.

She even has a list of nearby classes and their prices, times and availabilities.

Her mother is impressed. Aunt Mitsuki laughs for _days_.

“Alright, brats. Go get your ‘discipline’ and ‘improved hand-eye coordination.’” Aunty grins as she drops them off for their first lesson.

Kacchan humphs.

“I have _so much_ discipline.” He mutters, recalcitrant. Hinata smothers giggles into her hands.

The first time she stands across from Kacchan on the matt is… a lot.

She watches him, feelings coursing through her, and steps forward with two fingers extended without even thinking about it. Her cheeks flush red.

She doesn’t make this kind of mistake too often. She starts to take them back, an apology on the tip of her tongue, but Kacchan—ever surprising—stops looking at them curiously and reaches out his own hand to match.

They make the seal of reconciliation and they haven’t even fought yet. Privately, Hinata has always liked it compared to the seal of confrontation. Kacchan doesn’t even know what it means, so he won’t laugh at her, and it warms her that he did it anyway.

It’s like a promise.

They’re still friends, despite the fighting.

Hinata has spent long enough letting her sister beat her that it used to be the first thing she saw when an enemy rushed her. It had taken years of team spars to overcome that response—to just defend, and defend badly, until she couldn’t stand.

She overcomes it now, easily, smiling when Kacchan ran at her with a leading fist cocked back. The teacher had put them together—two children with the exact same level of experience, joining together? Hinata couldn’t blame her.

Kacchan was no Sakura, though; he couldn’t announce his move and not give a damn who saw him coming, on account of being terrifying and unstoppable.

What good was guarding against that kind of strength?

Hinata didn’t guard, regardless. She brought both hands up into Jyuken opening stance and moved with him, stepping and guiding his arm beyond her in the same sweeping motion. She gently jabbed his wrist and elbow, punishment for the overextension, and while he was unbalanced kicked his leg out from under him.

He kissed the floor. Hinata blinked slowly.

Well then.

The martial arts lesson continue, Hinata struggling deeply with the art until she decides to take it like she took the academy style and treat it as a cute, yet unnecessary, style which she had to master for a grade. There was no grade here beyond the belt colors, but it helped.

She failed to manifest a quirk.

Their peers developed opinions about it, but being two rapidly progressing martial artists helps with that. She knew more about hand-to-hand combat than most trained killers, and Kacchan had rushed, outraged, to keep up with her in the lessons.

He had handled ‘losing’ to her better than she expected. Instead of furious, he got determined; instead of screaming, he got quiet; and instead of hating her for it, he was truly impressed and happy for her.

When they’re ten years old, Hinata sleeps over at Kacchan’s house.

Aunty Mitsuki raises her hand threateningly, ready to smack him, and—

Kacchan flinches.

Hinata turns on Bakugou Mitsuki like an enemy, forgetting herself and _snarling_ at the older woman who stumbled back in true surprise.

She found herself between mother and son with no real comprehension of how she got there. It might have been a body flicker; it might have been an unconscious substitution. She was holding something and now she’s not, but assessing whether she threw it is impossible when her hands are settling gently on Kacchan’s shoulders, her back turned cold to Aunty—who is having a revelation in the corner, struggling with words that can’t defend the habitual violence.

There is an apology, later, heartfelt and gruff.

And even later than that:

Hinata lifts herself up onto the kitchen counter, body a bit small for her age. Her hair reaches down her ribs like hanging vines. Aunty is across from her, head in her hands.

The silence stretches.

“You don’t have to worry,” Hinata begins, staring at the counter. “About not realizing it, I mean. You don’t have to worry that you’ll get into the habit of hurting him and not even notice.”

“Oh?” Aunty looks at her with red-rimmed eyes. Hinata meets them. “And how’s that, brat? Cuz I gotta tell you, I didn’t even fu—I didn’t realize _this_.”

Her hand shakes. Hinata leans over to wrap her fingers around it, stilling the movement.

“You don’t have to worry about it.” Hinata repeats, and because this is her Aunty and Kacchan’s _mom_ she elaborates. “Because I’ll stop you. If it ever happens again, if you hit him or hurt him or even yell too loud, I’ll stop you. I’ll destroy you if I have to. I’ll ruin your entire life.”

Mitsuki looks at her, truly startled for the second time in one day. It’s not the kind of threat you expect from a young girl. She starts to ask _how_ but something about the look in Hinata’s eye stops her. The woman swallows.

“That’s good.” She admits, smiling a hollow smile. “That’s real good, Hinata-chan. It’s nice to know he has you looking out for him.” She pushes up abruptly from the table.

She starts to walk away, then pauses.

“I’m—” She takes a deep breath. “I signed up for some counseling. Starting tomorrow. It _won’t_ happen again, I’ll make sure of that, but—just in case. I clearly can’t—trust--- myself on this one. Just in case, I’m glad he has you looking out for him.”

“I mean it.” Hinata promises, green eyes deep with shadows. “I won’t enjoy it, Aunty, but I also won’t hesitate. You don’t want me for an enemy.”

She hops off the counter and walks away, slipping into Kacchan’s bed like she never left, wrapped around him in the kind of comfort she’d known once, with her entire team pressed close and _safe_.

“Yeah, kid. Shit.” Mitsuki muttered into the empty kitchen. “I sure as fuck _don’t_.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, laughing. It’s not a nice sound.

“Christ.”

\--

When they move to middle school, Hinata finds herself on the roof more often than not. As the kids get crueler, though more circumspect about it, she takes to staring blankly at them and Kacchan takes to following her up here. It is beyond her to care what a handful of civilian _teenagers_ think of her.

She watches the clouds, bittersweet, and Kacchan knocks his shoulder against hers and only very occasionally gets in fights for, if not her honor, then the honor of all quirkless people and the heroes who had better not give a damn what someone was born with.

Once, haltingly, he’d confessed all his worries into her shoulder, curled against her at night. About the pressure, his quirk, his inadequacies; his mother, the future, and _what if the world isn’t good_? Quirkless people get shafted _hard_ and Kacchan is more aware of that than she is, really. She hasn’t disassociated out of this body since she hit puberty, but it’s entirely too easy to drift—in a sense—away from all the genuinely childish things.

She can do classwork on autopilot at this point. Their words barely reach her. He’s more upset than she is.

Hinata can’t reciprocate with her own thoughts about the subject, because she isn’t harboring any secret fears about being quirkless, but she can’t _not_ meet him halfway, when he’s spilling his soul into the sheets and the darkness. Instead, she responds with the other thing.

She tells him, haltingly, that she doesn’t have a quirk but she _does_ have something else, a life before this one; tells him how she’s scared to touch those memories because, half the time, she flinches hard at the huge well of grief for the woman she’d loved.

They spend some time working through that one. They get into a fight that has them storming away from each other for a week because she refuses to demonstrate and he refuses to back down, until the distance gets to them and they collide back together, clutching each other desperately, inseparable for months.

He apologies roughly into her hair and she confesses that if she thinks too hard about it, she can see so much blood and the worst thing is it doesn’t really bother her, except for how much the _indifferent_ she is to it. She’d never _enjoyed_ killing but at sixteen she’d had ANBU inked into her shoulder and walked cheerfully into the shadows.

Her hobby had been growing poisons and expanding her arsenal of elemental jutsu in deadly pursuit of improvement. She hadn’t hesitated to use either, and what does that say about her?

Kacchan strokes her hair until she falls asleep: stressed, exhausted, and mired in indecision.

When Hinata is fourteen, they walk home from school together.

A monster—villain—comes out of the sewer, whose body her fists have little effect on. She notices his eyes and goes for _those_ , but Kacchan is next to her. They have no experience fighting on the same side, as opposed to sparring against each other, and they don’t get in each other’s way so much as she backs down immediately rather than risk him. It costs her.

The sludge villain sinks into her mouth and hair and eyes and skin and for a terrifying moment, the wet pressure on her skin is so familiar, a half-remembered dream of the safe-warm-dark—especially because she can’t _smell_ anything with him in her nose, and it hasn’t started hurting yet, it’s just _drowning_.

Kacchan’s explosions are set off right near her face, enough to blow black the slime as the villain shields his vulnerable eyes, and she surfaces gasping. The crazed, desperate look on Kacchan’s face slams the reality home for her and she realizes, with a distant sort of roaring noise, that this dumb motherfucker doesn’t have hands but has managed to put his hands on her _anyway_ , all over.

“What a soft little hidey-hole, with all these holes to hide in! Nobody will look for me in _you_.” The voice speaks, echoing strangely, and Hinata barely hears it because the roaring has become a tsunami.

Reality snaps into place as she remembers exactly why she had enjoyed learning different ways to kill people; some people just needed _killing_ , and preferably before they got a chance to hurt her precious people. Hesitance shattered like a breaking wave, resolve solidifying inside her.

She replaced herself with the sewer grate, body flickered with Kacchan far enough away, and returned back alone, hands already flying through seals and up to her mouth. She’d become something of a historian, recording and immortalizing the various village and clan techniques throughout the world which were threatened by time and loss, especially in those golden years after the 4th war-- when everyone loved everyone, and was all too happy to share. People poured in from Sand, Mist, Cloud and even Stone to preserve their legacies with the kunoichi who burned down her own, placing jutsu and secrets into her hands like treasure from every corner of the globe.

This one, though, this one was from _home_.

Hinata put her hands to her mouth as Sasuke had done a thousand times, flaring her chakra hot and deadly.

The tunnel lit up with fire.

\--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No criticism welcome! If you don't have anything nice to say, don't comment at all! Thanks for reading :)
> 
> Ahhhhh!! I'm super stoked about this. I'm still in the planning stages for a lot of the plot, but I'm working on it. I really enjoy reading the comments on this, so thank you for writing them. I enjoy the idea of Hinata ready to throw down and annihilate Mitsuki. That's her (other) childhood's trauma showing up. A parent? Hitting their kid? Not in this lifetime.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There is one condition though.” She paused and looked him dead in the eyes.
> 
> Shinsou braced himself.
> 
> “You absolutely cannot tell my mother.”
> 
> Bakugou snorted hard.
> 
> “She’s gonna find out, you know!”
> 
> “Not today!” Hinata hisses back. “And not from either of you!”
> 
> She turns back to Shinsou.
> 
> “Well? Do we have a deal?”
> 
> Shinsou stared at her offered hand.
> 
> “I’m not too sure this isn’t an elaborate dream, or maybe some kind of scam, but sure. What the hell. We’re agreed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS is not as linear as I wanted it to be, but I found my old notes (hidden on my phone, of all places). I incorporated them as best as I could. I'm vibing with this so far, but I might change it out some other time! I'm pretty happy with how this came out.

All Might jumps back from the inferno just in time, pressing his back to the sewer wall when heat suddenly erupts from the hole he was ready to emerge from. It lasts for thirty seconds that feel like a small eternity.

His first thought is that Endeavor—reckless, honorable Endeavor—had stumbled onto the scene and, ever willing to help, unleashed his quirk in the tunnel, a perfect trap.

When All Might does jump through the opening, however, he finds the tunnel is empty. Charred black sludge coats the walls, moving sluggishly, and he slumps with relief to find the villain alive. Not that he’d worried about Endeavor’s control, you understand, but even the best of them make mistakes.

He looked around the tunnel, ready to thank the Number Two hero, only to find himself quite alone.

“A hero’s work is never done,” he laughs to himself, touched that even prideful Todoroki Enji trusted him with the cleanup.

Outside of the tunnel, Hinata presses a calm hand to Kacchan’s mouth, holding his body against the stonework with her own.

All Might leaps into the air with a villain securely encased in his plastic bottles.

“That was  _ All Might, _ ” Kacchan hisses, vibrating with excitement. “Also  _ Hime holy shit you can breathe fire. _ ”

Hinata could say several things to that.

_ So did Midoriya Hisashi, _ she thinks, and hard on that thought’s heels:  _ They say the Sharingan came from the Byakugan. _

“I can do a lot of things.” She settles on, remembering the way her clan had flourished once freed from the insular trappings of  _ Jyuuken and only Jyuuken, _ the way they’d never be able to memorize jutsu like the Sharingan did, or evolve into increasingly ridiculous abilities, but how they could flawlessly use any jutsu they tried,  _ anyway. _

_ Hyuuga don’t have chakra natures, _ she thinks, still somewhat furious that she’d never even been  _ introduced  _ to elemental ninjutsu until she was grown, because of the nonsense  _ tradition  _ that her clan didn’t use them. She thinks of the jutsu settled into her hands like diamonds and emeralds and rubies and she, the white-eyed dragon hoarding them, and she thinks about Kaguya-the-mother-of-chakra and how the Byakugan came first.

She thinks  _ I can do anything  _ and then bites down on that pride before it can get someone hurt.

Kacchan leads her to the park beside their home, through the familiar trees that are dwarfed by her memories, to the clearing by the water.

“Show me ‘a lot of things’,” He challenges, eyes lit up with excitement as they stop a ways away from the bridge.

Hinata walks out onto the river, kicking spray with the bottom of her shoes, and Kacchan boggles.

“That’s not the best part.” She says later, much later, her pale eyes fixed on the grass that has been singed and cut, the ground that has been overturned and flooded and moved by her jutsu.

“It’s not?” Kacchan sounds hoarse, looking at her as if she could do anything next and he wouldn’t question it. He looks at her like she could swallow the moon.

It warms her stomach, softens her smile as she walks back and offers out a hand.

“It’s teachable.” She confides, quiet under the gentle lap of waves.

Kacchan’s eyes go wide, red eyes half swallowed by pupil, and she thinks:

_ Byakugan first, then red. _

It’s the natural order of things. He may not have the Sharingan, but she thinks back to the crazy goddess who held two sons in her arms; thinks of the silver-eyed Sage who’s firstborn son bore blood-red eyes, thinks: it would not hurt me, to teach you here.

Kacchan has made fire with his hands for years but under her careful guidance, slowly learns to do the same with his fingers and mouth and, eventually, the curve of steel clenched tight by the hilt. It’s only the beginning.

\---

Hinata is not the most selfless person. She can’t give up everything important to her for a stranger in need, for someone she just met. She can’t cut herself open to sustain the world. She’d learned hard and she’d learned bloody that her needs come first and there’s no shame in it. She won’t be shamed for that.

But so too has Hinata had to hold firmly to the parts of her the world or her family—her father—would cut away. Hinata is not selfless, but she is  _ kind, _ despite everyone around her seeing it as a weakness. Hinata values nature and beauty; Hinata wants to help people for no other reason than they need help; she will be the offered hand in the dark, whenever she can be.

This is not a failure, a weakness or something about her to be fixed.

Hinata has worked hard to love the person she is and she won’t change it for anybody. She will be as steel in  _ that, _ if nothing else.

She gets to know her neighbors, because she is a kind girl raised in a nice neighborhood in Japan. Her mother sends her with snacks and errands first to the Bakugous and then to the sweet old lady down the hall, and to the receptionist of their building who works too much, and then down the streets of Musutafu to pick things up from the shops or deliver them.

And because she is Hinata, she asks about their days. She listens, and she learns. She brings a bruise cream to the Sweet Shop’s owner’s daughter, who is trying out for a contact-sport team and often needs it. She runs errands for countless uncles and aunties, darting between shops to cheerful greetings, and she sweeps here and there, picks up shifts sometimes. She tries out Akimichi recipes in a local bakery that become instant sensations. She tutors the sons of the butcher shop in math and Japanese literature. She walks dogs. On sunny Sunday mornings, she keeps the old man who plays chess at the park company. She has babysat more times than she can count.

More often than not, she does this on her own, because every walk and trip out of the house inevitably transforms when she notices someone who needs help, but every so often Kacchan is with her, because it’s not like she  _ stops  _ doing this when she’s got company.

He’d boggled, at first. Eventually he just went with it. This is the way Hinata was and would always be. Kacchan tagged along with only a few grumbles at this point.

“Think of it like practice being a hero!” She encouraged.

“How the  _ Hell  _ is this like being a hero?” Kacchan huffed, carrying heavy crates behind her for the local grocer.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? People need help and we’re helping them. That’s the essence of heroism!”

“I  _ guess. _ ” Kacchan rolls his eyes heavenward. “It’s good strength training, if nothing else.”

So he goes along with it when she volunteers their time and services to run messages, carry equipment, help someone moving in.

He’s so used to Hinata butting her nose everywhere it doesn’t belong, in fact, that he doesn’t even question it when they hear a cry and her eyes narrow into slits. One moment, they’re walking and discussing a new movie, and the next she’s a shadow darting down an alley.

Katsuki’s eyes take a moment to adjust to the darker light. By the time they do, it’s already over. Hinata has darted in with knifed hands and jabbed them sharply into chests and kidneys. The flat of her palm impacts harshly with the center of some guy’s body and he goes  _ flying. _

She’s not even breathing hard.

There’s a guy on the ground who flinches when Katsuki approaches.

“You’re going to get us arrested for vigilantism.” He grouses, bending down to check on the victim. Around them four—no, five—bullies groan on the ground.

“Did you see me use a quirk?” She doesn’t sound worried at all. “Hey, you’re okay.”

She addresses the downed guy, gentler. He looks up through a black eye.

“Who are you?” The guy sounds suspicious as hell.

“I’m Bakugou.” Katsuki interrupts before Hinata can introduce him to anyone. “This is Midoriya. She can’t resist any form of community service. Including, apparently, ‘taking out the trash.’”

The guy snorts. His hair is a riot of purple.

“Shinsou. Thanks.” He takes her offered hand up. “You didn’t have to help me.”

“No one ever has to help anyone else.” Hinata says, eyes a touch sharp. “I’m gonna do it anyway.”

“Fair enough.” The guy scuffs his shoe. “Thanks, I guess. Be seeing you.”

Hinata reaches out to stop him.

“I’ve got some bruise salve if you’d like some. You look pretty beat up.”

He hesitates.

“You’ve got it on you?”

“No, but we live nearby.” Katsuki jerks his head up the street. “Let her feed and take care of you. It’ll make her feel better.”

“I…” He looks at a loss. “You know what? Fuck it, I don’t have anywhere better to be. And I guess I owe you.”

Hinata beams at him, which for her is a tiny smile that glitters in her eyes.

That is how Shinsou Hitoshi joins their ragtag group of do-gooders.

\---

Or rather, that’s how they meet.

Every subsequent hour of their acquaintance is Hinata digging her claws in deeper. Eventually, he just doesn’t leave.

“Why were those fuckers wailing on you, anyway?” Kacchan asks, as Hinata applies antiseptic to a cut on his face. She shoots him a sharp look that slides off him, water on oil.

“Something about my face, I guess.” He drawls, his eyes squinting closed at a particularly painful dab.

“Yeah, I can see it.” She stretches out her foot to kick him.

Shinsou snorts.

“Does this happen often?” Hinata asks, trying not to come off too strong.

Shinsou rolls his tall shoulders.

“You could say that.” He hasn’t been meeting her eyes the entire time she’s working on him, and now is no different. She finishes up with his face, taking his chin strongly in hand to turn in back and forth, looking closely at the wounds.

“I  _ think  _ this’ll be good with just a butterfly strip.” She decides. He breathes out a sigh of relief.

“No stitches?” He checks. She nods.

“Alright, take your shirt off.” Hinata goes back to rummaging in her comically over-sized first aid kit. Katsuki figured it was even odds whether it was her or Aunt Inko who had insisted on it.

The purple kid freezes. It takes Hinata a second to notice.

“You’re not hiding any bruised ribs or severe trauma, are you? Because we can take this directly to the hospital.” She pins him with pastel green eyes, almost silver. She eyes his shirt, looking for cuts or tears indicating some sort of catastrophic damage beneath.

“No!” Shinsou interrupts, “It’s not that, Jeeze.”

He takes a breath.

“I’m—I’ve got more breast tissue than most guys. I’m. Intersex. That’s where—” He picks up as if for a well-rehearsed, if weary, spiel.

Katsuki scoffs to interrupt.

“Trans.” He jerks a thumb to himself. “Masc, obviously.”

Hinata smiles at him all proud and beatific, then turns back to Shinsou.

“Trans.” She says softly, pointing at herself. “She/her, please.”

All the fight drains right out of him. Something like naked relief makes a home on his tired face.

“Ah. That’s great. Uh. Um.” He shoots Katsuki a panicked look.

“If you’re not comfortable, she’ll just send you in the bathroom with some gauze or some shit.” Katsuki debates with himself a moment before putting a hand on the guy’s shoulder.

“Do you have experience with first aid?” Hinata wavers.

Shinsou looks back and forth between both of them.

“I think I’ll be okay.” He mutters, and strips his shirts off. He’s wearing a thready, open button-up over another shirt. Hinata goes for his main injury right away, a large swathe of developing bruises over his ribs. His other side has some scraping from where he hit the ground, or something.

“I’ve got some cream from the bruise, but you’ve got gravel in the abrasion. I’ll need to flush it out before I disinfect it. Kacchan, can you grab me a water bottle? We might need to do this over the tub. Here, tell me how this feels. Any trouble breathing?”

She presses gently into the edges of the bruise.

“It hurts.” Shinsou admits. “I don’t think they’re broken, though.”

“Me either.” Hinata confirms. “We’ll leave those to heal on their own.”

Katsuki comes back with a few bottles of water and a plastic bin.

“Here, we can pour into this. It was holding some bags in the pantry, you know.” He sets it down. “I figured the little bottles would be better than a big jug.”

Hinata shot him a quick, grateful smile.

“Good idea, Kacchan.” She shifted over. “Here, Shinsou-san—”

“Shinsou is fine.”

“Thank you. Here, lean over—yes, like that. We have to get the debris out. Kacchan, a wash cloth--? Oh, thank you. I’ll try to be gentle.”

Shinsou looks to Katsuki above her head.

_ Is she for real? _

He finds commiseration there. The blonde’s expression says: Oh, you don’t even  _ know _ .

When they’re done, and the wound is cleaned to her military satisfaction, she presses a bandage the size of his face to the rough area.

“Like a tattoo.” Katsuki bends over to eye it.

“Like I need more reasons to get my ass kicked.” Shinsou huffs. “What would it even say?”

“I don’t know you well enough,” Katsuki says. “Maybe ‘Too stupid to run away?’”

Hinata elbows him in the ribs.

“Ha. Like that’d help. I’d been dodging those assholes for weeks before they finally caught me alone. Blocked off both sides of the alley so I couldn’t get away.”

“Cowards.” Katsuki’s face twists. “Is it the intersex thing?”

“No, it’s not the ‘intersex thing.’ They don’t know about that, thank god.”

“Good. I’d hate to track some fuckers down and take out their kneecaps, but I can make the time.”

“Kacchan.” Hinata complains. “That would be so obvious. There are better ways to disable an enemy.”

Shinsou’s already begun rolling his eyes at the pacifism before her last sentence lands and he boggles at her.

Katsuki laughs at him.

“You do  _ remember  _ she fucked those bitches up in the alley, right?”

“Yeah, no, I just—huh.” He looks over her with new eyes as she helps him sit up and gives him one last check over for anything they missed. “I don’t usually ask— _ really  _ do I not usually ask—but. What’s your quirk? Something with speed?”

“I’m quirkless, actually.” She says, at the same time as Katsuki says, “What  _ isn’t  _ her quirk.”

Shinsou stares at her.

“Fuck, and I thought  _ I  _ had it bad!” He laughs, halfway to incredulous. “And you just—jumped in there?”

“She can’t leave well enough alone.” Katsuki said.

Hinata scowled at him briefly.

“I’m trans and quirkless.” She said, sardonically. “Of course I know how to fight.”

Her eyes rolled over Shinsou.

“You’ll need to stay as immobile as you can until the ribs clear up, for at least a week. Don’t pick up anything heavy, avoid bending over if you can help it, but try not to stay laying down  _ all  _ the time.”

Shinsou took that as a dismissal. He made to stand.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, I guess. Thanks for the save.”

Hinata’s hand came down on his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” She asked.

“Uh. Back—to where I stay.” His cheeks rushed a very faint pink. “I can’t just stay here for a week.”

“Well, you can, actually, but that’s not what I meant. You said you didn’t have anywhere better to go. Would anyone mind if you stayed the night?”

“Uh. Wouldn’t  _ you  _ mind if I stayed the night? Or your parents, or whatever?”

“We have a guest room.” Hinata smiles at him.

It’s a pretty smile but a shiver runs down his back. It’s got an undertone of  _ steel. _

“I’m a foster kid.” Shinsou bites out. “I don’t have any body waiting up for me. They won’t be bothered if I don’t come home.”

“Well that’s fucked.” Katsuki scowls. “They won’t care at all?”

“Maybe after a few days, yeah, but I’ve been gone longer.” Shinsou doesn’t get worked up about it. “I’ve stayed in worse places. They don’t beat me, I mean. There’s seven of us and we all share rooms.”

“So what I’m hearing is ‘Yes, Midoriya, I’ll sleep in your guest room tonight and possibly for the next few days.’” Her eyes bore into his.

“What about your parents?” Falls out of Shinsou’s mouth. He knows his experience isn’t exactly  _ normal. _

“My mom won’t mind. I’ll call her and explain so she knows to buy enough for four. Tonight is take-out night.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Shinsou brings up both hands. “I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You’re not a burden.” Hinata says sharply. “And we have plenty of—everything, really. Plenty of space, plenty of food, plenty of money.”

“But I’m—” Shinsou breaks off harshly and looks at the wall behind them. “I’m not the kind of person you want staying over.”

“I disagree.” Hinata says. Katsuki sweeps up the discarded materials and the oversized med-kid and goes to put it all up, but what Shinsou says next makes him pause in his steps.

“I’ve got a villain quirk!” He yells, breathing hard. His hand flies to his bare ribs on instinct, cradling the pain there. “I’ve just—my quirk is evil, so. You don’t want me in your house. You wouldn’t have helped me if you knew.”

He won’t meet their eyes.

Hinata presses his shirts into his hands. Shinsou takes them like he’s going to stand up and go, but once more she tugs him down.

“I don’t care about your quirk.” Hinata tells him, firmly. “Do you need anything special for it?”

“It activates by—”

“That’s not what I asked.” She cuts him off. “Some people need stuff for their quirks, that they can’t go without. Kacchan washes his clothes in special detergent because some of his sweat is made of nitroglycerin.”

“My quirk is a vocal quirk that—” Once more she cuts him off, gently.

“Five-point quirk activation types often wear special gloves to prevent their quirk from activating accidentally. Kacchan has to drink more water than normal because he sweats so much. Does your vocal quirk mean you need lozenges or throat spray? Does it hurt your throat when you overuse it?”

“I’m not going to  _ use it  _ !” Shinsou bit out, scandalized.

“If you want to, you can.” Hinata said simply. Katsuki walked out of the room.

“No, I fucking  _ can’t. _ Why are you saying all this!?” Shinsou looks like a feral animal when Katsuki comes back, staring at her.

“You’re safe here. You and your quirk. You can stay here as long as you like.”

Tears build up in the kid’s eyes despite himself.

“You don’t even know me!”

“I know enough.” Hinata settles one hand over his. “Nobody deserves to get beaten in an alley for something they can’t control.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like it’s the first time.” Shinsou huffs, voice cracking. “It won’t be the last, either.”

“Why don’t you fight back?” Katsuki asks. Shinsou looks up at him.

“Fight back? How. They know my quirk.”

“With your fists, asshole.”

“Then they’ll report me.” Shinsou says grimly. “And who are they gonna believe started it? The boy with the brainwashing quirk?”

“I can teach you self-defense.” Hinata says. “You can at least avoid getting hurt as often.”

“She can teach you more than that.”

Hinata looks over at him, startled.

“What? You can’t say it’s a bad idea. Didn’t you say last week that I needed a sparring partner?”

“I’m just surprised you’re willing.” She admitted. “You’re not one to share.”

“Uh. What are you talking about?” Shinsou looked back and forth between them.

“Hm.” Hinata looked at him again. “So I’m quirkless, right?”

Shinsou nodded cautiously.

“Where are you going with this?”

“It’s a bit of a long story. So, there’s not just quirks in the world. Let’s start there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what she said.” Katsuki huffed. “Quirks aren’t the only kind of power out there.”

“You mean like… electricity? Support gear?”

“No. Like magic.”

“Kacchan! For the last time, it’s not magic.” She looks beseechingly at Shinsou. “Really, it’s not. My ancestor… discovered a source of power. She could share it with people, so she did. It got more complicated than that, but for a time everyone could use this power.”

“Her great-ancestor-grandma ate a magic fruit and gave people magic powers.”

“ _ Kacchan!  _ ”

“She gave me magic powers, and she can give you magic powers, too.”

Hinata covered her face with both hands and groaned.

“That’s not true but he is, in essence, correct.”

Shinsou stared at them.

“A quirk that lets you… give people quriks?” He squints. “I think I’ve heard  _ rumors  _ about something like that. Everyone always says I have a villain quirk, so I’ve looked it up before. You know, the quirks of the greatest villains. Gotta say, Brainwashing isn’t  _ as  _ up there as it could be.”

His fists clenched.

“Sorry, I don’t believe it. Quirks are all there is. And nobody gets to decide which quirk they’re born with, more’s the pity.”

“You’re wrong.” Hinata says. “Quirks  _ aren’t  _ all that’re out there.”

“She’s right.” Bakugou says simply. “My quirk, Explosion, lets me ignite nitroglycerin at my palms. But the princess showed me how to use this other energy, one she says every human is born with. I can’t do much with it— _ yet  _ —but I can do some things, same as her.”

“Like what?” Despite himself, Shinsou leans forward, intrigued.

“Well…” He slowly brings his hands together in weird formations, almost like Japanese Sign Language. With a puff of smoke, two more Bakugous stand on either side of him. They don’t look great, and Bakugou looks tired just doing it.

He smirks and the other two Bakugous smirk with him.

“Next week I learn how to teleport.” The three of them say.

“Kacchan, I told you. You’ll learn to switch yourself with other objects. Teleportation won’t be for another month, at  _ least. _ ”

“Same thing.” The clones burst into smoke. Bakugou frowns at them.

“And  _ anybody  _ can learn?” Shinsou demands. “Why teach me, then? Why not go teach all the quirkless kids? Why not go to the government and teach  _ everybody  _ ?”

Hinata’s eyes harden.

“My ancestor taught  _ everyone  _ chakra. Or rather, she gave them the potential and her son showed them how to use it. That’s not important, now. What matters is that everyone used the power for  _ war. _ For generations—well before quirks, or history as you know it—people formed families and clans, villages and countries, and they killed each other with chakra. Child soldiers, some as young as kindergartners, killed each other in cold blood. Entire families were massacred using this power.”

“So no, Shinsou, I don’t believe I’ll just give it out to  _ anyone. _ I’m surely not going to give it to  _ everyone. _ Who knows what this society of quirks and heroes would do with a universal leveler like chakra.”

He stares at her. Kacchan also stares, because she’s never really told him that in so many words.

“Kacchan’s right, though. I’ll teach  _ you, _ if you want to learn. I think you’ll use what I teach you for the right reasons.”

“There is one condition though.” She paused and looked him dead in the eyes.

Shinsou braced himself.

“You absolutely cannot tell my mother.”

Bakugou snorted hard.

“She’s gonna find out, you know!”

“Not today!” Hinata hisses back. “And not from either of you!”

She turns back to Shinsou.

“Well? Do we have a deal?”

Shinsou stared at her offered hand.

“I’m not too sure this isn’t an elaborate dream, or maybe some kind of scam, but sure. What the hell. We’re agreed.”

“Excellent.” She beamed at him. “If that’s the case, let me heal you  _ properly. _ I haven’t really used Iryou-ninjutsu in this lifetime, but I know I can do the basic technique.”

Her companions reacted to the suddenly green-glowing hands with mutual alarm.

“You can  _ heal  _ people!?” Kacchan demanded, right as Shinsou shouted, “NINJUTSU?”

\---

When she is twelve years old, Hinata buys a roll of shop paper with her steadily-increasing pocket money. She has been working odd jobs and missions for the people of Musutafu for years.

She infuses ink with chakra and sets to work.

It doesn’t need to be chakra paper, not for this. The seals won’t stay on the paper for long.

_ She  _ is the vessel for this particular set of seal matrices, and she will transfer it onto her unmarked skin as soon as the ink dries.

It takes her five days to write out the complicated sequences.

That’s alright, though. It’ll take her three years, at least, to fill the seals Sakura gave her.

\---

Hinata, like all Hyuuga, has an eidetic memory.

She never forgets something she’s read, heard or experienced, even if she lacks the true mimicry and instant reproduction of the Sharingan.

“You’re the historian.” Sakura had said, making it sound more important than it was. “Remember  _ this. _ ”

She’d proceeded to rock Hinata’s metaphorical world by unfolding the sealwork under the diamond on her forehead, and then took Ino’s hand and rocked her physical  _ planet  _ with the kind of mind blowing night that Hinata will always remember as breathy laughter, sweat, absurd biceps and flower petals.

It had been the very first seal offered to Hinata’s growing library, her empire of jutsu and scrolls. Hyuuga didn’t  _ have  _ chakra natures, not as normal people did. Any jutsu they tried would work just as well as any other, given enough elbow grease. No element was too difficult, no technique too specific, no  _ bloodline release denied to them. _ They had been chained to the Jyuuken out of fear and tradition and Hinata cut those chains along with all the others; the Hyuuga were a clan of caged birds, set free!

It was also the  _ best  _ seal she would ever see, three complex matrices in one, and nothing would ever compare. Hinata had all of Uzushio’s lost libraries bundled up under her skin, everything that could be salvaged, and the fuinjutsu that sealed the nine tailed gods written in careful ink on her most forbidden scrolls.

But nothing compared to the Uzumaki Yin Seal, Tsunade’s Creation Rebirth, and Sakura’s Strength of One Hundred, all folded into the singular design that the latter had created with majesty and grace.

Hinata has had a unique experience during this reincarnation.

Every time she surfaced from the rivers of her own, personal Lethe, she reached automatically for her chakra. Every time, her underdeveloped coils answered. She came to steady awareness at six, seven, and eight years old, molding chakra as carefully as she was able.

As the years passed her time of awareness shifted from minutes to long hours, to days, and somewhere around twelve or thirteen she just… left the waters behind for good. It had happened that each time she went under she was more aware beneath the surface, able to see and hear what was going on in the world around her, until one day she blinked with clarity and found herself never sinking back down.

The result, of course, is that her chakra control is much improved.

She was an adult mind in a child’s body, as real as that second childhood really, really was, and that lent a grown shinobi’s deft hand on her young coils. She used them earlier and more effectively, meditating to increase her standing reserve, as well as draining it as often as possible to stretch the limits of her available chakra.

She grew in leaps and bounds. So was it that, at nearly fifteen years old, with the results of several  _ years  _ of daily and vigorous training behind her, Hinata swallowed nostalgia and felt a seal like a  _ star  _ fade into visibility on her forehead.

It would be the only seal to  _ ever  _ grace a Hyuuga forehead, ever again.

\---

Every day, Kacchan and Hinata went to the forest next to the park they’d played in as kids. The paths were well-familiar to his feet and to hers.

Starting that week, Shinsou joined them.

“We meet here to train.” Bakugou explained, gesturing at the plentiful flora. “Supposedly the trees will be helpful at some point.”

“Mmm. Tree-walking. You’re not there yet.” Both boys gave her a curious glance, but didn’t ask. “They also make good targets when we get to the really destructive stuff, but more importantly we’re—well. Hidden in the leaves.”

She grins to herself and doesn’t share the joke.

“Makes sense.” Shinsou acknowledges. “Since to anybody watching we’re doing highly illegal quirk practice.”

Bakugou crushes his knuckles.

“Only if we get caught.” He grins. “Plus, there’s a loophole. If you’re sufficiently isolated from the public, and training to get into a hero school, it’s technically allowed for you to exercise your quirk.”

“Let’s try to avoid relying on that technicality.” Hinata says dryly. Shinsou laughs, caught off guard.

“Alright, so, ninjutsu. And taijutsu. And genjutsu—actually, come to think of it, Shinsou, your quirk is an awful lot like genjutsu.”

“It is?” Shinsou asks.

“Yeah, creating illusions with your chakra. It’s not  _ super  _ popular, because everyone can use… their chakra… to escape them.” Hinata sat down hard.

Her eyes glazed over.

“Hey, Hime.  _ Hime. _ Come on, nerd, explain where you went.”

He kneels down to her, waving a hand in front of her sightless eyes. Her hands grab onto his forearms. She looks urgently into his face.

“ _ Kacchan.  _ Kacchan. People  _ can’t use chakra. _ There’s  _ no defense against genjutsu. _ ”

“So what, you put people in an illusion and they can’t get out?”

“No! They  _ can’t. _ So you can just—win. Against anyone. Even if they know they’re in an illusion, they can’t  _ do  _ anything about it. You can be as obvious as you want!”

“So that’s a good thing, yeah?”

“That’s  _ terrifying. _ ” Hinata is horrified at the implications. “The world just became so  _ breakable, _ Kacchan. I can kill literally anyone.”

“UM.” Shinsou says from nearby, understandably concerned.

“Hang on, she just realized there’s no counter for some of her magic. Come on, princess, walk me through all the ways you’d get out of a genjutsu normally.”

“Right. Right, of course. So, step one, obviously, flare your chakra hard. Second method: reverse the flow of your chakra to disrupt the genjutsu. Third, self-inflicted pain, but it’s not a guarantee. Finally, it’s  _ possible  _ to use highly advanced medical ninjutsu to alter the chakra of your brain, but I’m not sure I could do it safely. No, no, I could. My control is good enough now.”

“So a hero could realize they’re in a genjutsu and hurt themselves to get out of it?” Kacchan asked patiently. “That’s got to be a method used to get out of illusion-based quirks. Surely they’d think of it.”

Hinata relaxed—or rather, she slumped, letting go of his forearms. Kacchan followed her down and picked her up, pulling her close into a hug.

“Yeah.” She sniffed. “Yeah, okay. A hero at least has a  _ chance  _ to get out of it. I can’t live in a world where I can control everyone on a  _ whim, _ Kacchan. I can’t and I don’t want to.”

“Don’t worry, princess. We’ll knock some sense in you if you try going the megalomaniac route. I’ve got back-up now.”

“No, seriously, what the fuck is happening.”

“Hime realized the only defense for one of her magics  _ is  _ magic and freaked the fuck out because it meant no one could possibly stop her if she wanted to grind this world under her boot.”

She snorted into his collar.

“Shut up.” She huffed weakly.

“Alright, well, right now I’m hardly any sort of back-up, being that I, you know, only have the good old quirk to rely on.” He smiled sardonically.

“Let’s fix that.” Said the dragon princess, turning from Katsuki with chakra in her hands.

Kaguya, or the Sage, or  _ whomever  _ had once given everyone in the world chakra from the great tree. The Academy once had the much easier job of simply showing people how to tap  _ into  _ their innate ability to mold chakra.

Now Hinata must do as her ancestors did originally.

She presses her thumbs into her forefingers and places one hand against his third eye and another across his heart, and she reaches deep into the core of her where chakra becomes soul becomes the light of origin that explodes across creation.

𝒮 𝒽 𝑒 𝒷 𝓇 𝑒 𝒶 𝓉 𝒽 𝑒 𝓈

l i f e 

In a moment they are stretched out in the endless sands of time in the non-colors that exist and  _ Shinsou  _ is before her, the being who has shed their body, and she brushes the lips she doesn’t have over his third eye and whispers to him the secrets of yin and yang and nature, says: do not be as the rocks and the sea, do not be as the trees and animals, be instead as the stars and create your own energy distinct and special, for it is in creation that we achieve immortality.

Hinata sings the combination of yin and yang and spirit and body and nature and soul into the being before her and sparks the first reaction, the first collision, the first drop of c h a k r a and walks him through it, her energy cradling his as one being, she is mother, creator and child, she—

Flies on wings of aura back into her body, guiding Shinsou by the hand.

She breathes for the first time in eons and he gasps his first breath, jerking back from her. She lets her hands fall from where his energy connects to his mortal prison, the point of yin chakra and the point of yang, and her arms fall limply at her sides.

“That’s another reason why I don’t just go unlocking the chakra of every person on the planet.” She admits roughly. “I’m not so eager to hold seven billion souls in my bare hands, if I could even do such a thing.”

Kacchan crouches next to where Shinsou has collapsed heaving onto the earth.

“Total mindfuck, right?” He offers conspiratorially and Shinsou stares at him like he’s having an existential crisis, like he has forgotten Japanese or the concept of it seems ludicrous, and also perhaps like his body has started combining all of his physical and mental energy into a burning engine of pure chakra at his core, a nuclear reactor set to ignite.

He stared at the sky with wide, wide eyes and felt his tenketsu spark to life one by one.

“Alright, Kacchan.” She stands wearily and brushes her palms against her trousers, shakes them out like she’s restoring blood flow—or, more likely, remembering how to use  _ hands. _ “Let’s start you on the time-honored Shinobi tradition of throwing sharp knives at still targets.”

“What, really? Where are we going to get the knives?”

“I set up a forge last year to make my own ninja gear. It’s not all that hard with Doton, actually.”

“What?  _ Where?  _ ”

“Don’t worry about it. Once you’ve got decent aim we can move into teaching you the Kawarimi. The only practical use for it is dodging projectiles, and if you’re going to  _ dodge  _ you need to throw something back.”

“The worst part is that I’m starting to see your convoluted logic.” He sighs. “Alright, hand them over. And what are you going to be doing while I bust my ass on target practice?”

“Well… have I ever told you about exploding tags?” She smiles at him, unnervingly innocent. He blinks hard.

“No. I would have remembered, because, you know, ‘exploding’. What are they?”

She fingered some sort of  _ ofuda  _ she wasn’t holding a moment ago.

“ _ Watch. _ ”

\---

Team Seven drops the end of the world into her hands, one by one like flowers.

The secrets of Sanin and Kage are pressed close to her heart, from Sakura's murmuring lips and Naruto's trusting hands. Sasuke spills years and years and libraries of techniques like water into Hinata's teacup, always pulling the teapot back before she can get overwhelmed. Their afternoon tea dates stretch years into the future, long after Sakura and Naruto have exhausted things to give her.

Sakura shows her the secrets of anatomy and physiology, adding on to the considerable plenty the Hyuuga already know. Hinata fills in Sakura's gaps with clan secrets, details of tenketsu gleamed with decades of practice.

Naruto shows her how to sit without moving, to take the world entire into her breast, and tells her quiet yet happily about the man who was a father to him, an uncle and a teacher rolled in one, about the grandparents he found in the sages of the mountain.

He doesn't have much to teach her but he always has enough to say; they learn  _ together, _ unraveling the secrets of the universe one seal at a time because he is an Uzumaki and she can see chakra, however it is written, and they were both denied as children, so now they take and take and hungrily take, meditating, between long dinners where the ink spills like wine, in the morning light of the sun that crawls into their starved veins and bones and almost feels like enough.

Shikamaru brings her shoji boards and clan secrets, strategies and lost techniques. He wraps her hands around the treasures of his clan and trusts her with his family; the others follow suit.

Hinata is glutted with knowledge and precious treasure. Choji brings recipes and cookbooks and is unashamed to share with her. she shows him healing salves and which precise tenketsu will destabilize his clan ninjutsu when shut off and he hugs her, more often than not, because she married into his family more or less, regarding her with the exact same affection Shikamaru shows with late-night boardgames and lazy blinks that turn into midafternoon naps.

Kiba and Shino were already her family, so deep and embedded that a hundred bijuu couldn't destroy their bonds, because that's how teams  _ work  _ and they've been pressing secrets into her hands long before she obliterated the chains keeping her clan trapped in slavery.

The Hyuuga spilled out into the world with new dragon eyes and greedy dragon fingers, eager to fill the missing pieces, the we-have-been-denied, and while Hinata led the dragons she was hardly the only one who hungered, the only one whose hoard gleamed bright with trust and gold and treasure.

It turns out if you give a jutsu to a Hyuuga they will keep it like a gem, precious, and that love they feel will follow you into a thousand hells, undaunted.

Formality falls like a discarded shell and they stretch awkward limbs to reestablish blood flow, and then the clan of dragons raised in the dark lift their wings and their curious eyes and climb into every secret they can find, rubbing their scaled heads against startled teammates and staring intensely at the things they're now allowed to have.

The village already knew that, despite their repressed and strained familial bonds, a Hyuuga on a team will die for their squad. The world learns that when their family is allowed to love them, the bonds formed between dragons become the most vicious, open and protective love.

Neji gnawed halfway thru his own bindings and Hinata caught a glimpse of freedom in the way he stood guard in front of her, a challenge and a dare and knight, and then he almost fell to save her and she broke through her own chains like rusted metal and roared.

Hinata ripped apart the caged bird seal and a thousand Hyuuga rose behind her, free at last and furious

Hinata went home after the war and burned their cages and traditions down to the foundation and shattered that too, for good measure.

A Hyuuga is whatever a Hyuuga wants to be, she decided, and no one survived getting in her way. Slowly they evolved from the Jyuuken. Slowly they learned that while they can't copy jutsu just by looking, any hand seals put into their hands are learned fast and swift and perfectly, regardless of which element, and it only takes one young dragon watching Tenzou work before they realize any element means  _ any  _ element, any element at all.

Hyuuga don't have chakra natures someone once said and so they never taught Hyuuga elemental ninjutsu.  _ Hyuuga don't have chakra natures, _ the Hyuuga realized;  _ we can learn any jutsu in the world. _

_ \--- _

Hinata banged her elbow on the table when she was two years old and it hurt more than anything she'd experienced in her short life.

It jolted her out of the incomplete Lethe, the dark water of reincarnation that hosted her adult consciousness.

She woke, groggy and unfamiliar and in a babe's body, and by instinct touched her own chakra.

It didn't react. Hinata blinked, confused and hurt, but she kick-started her tiny chakra system anyway.

From then on, every time she opened her eyes, entirely uncognizant of what was happening, she once more reached for her chakra. 

Each time she found still more and more waiting for her.

She chases after Kacchan and she sticks leaves to her arms. She cuddles with her mom and sticks her shoes to the bottom of her feet.

She does every chakra control exercise she knows and waits, patiently, for the time when she doesn't fall back asleep.

When Hinata is eleven she floats in the water, watching everything around her; it doesn't come up past her chin. When she is nearly twelve she wades through it, slow and steady, and at twelve-and-a-half years old she goes from dreaming to sleepwalking to wide awake and never, ever goes back.

This is her body and her life and she'll live it proudly, keeping her precious people safe with skills honed in a time of war.

\---

Hinata breathes in the cool dawn air and thinks about how she is one misguided teenager away from a full genin team.

The horizon is broken up by refuse and garbage as far as the eye can see, except for the one small area where she has begun clearing it. She started this task on a whim, unable to bear the sad reminiscing of an older couple; she proposed on this beach and her wife was sad to see it reduced to a landfill.

A tall figure comes up behind her, yet Hinata isn’t bothered. The sun breaks over the tops of the tallest piles of garbage, lighting up her face as she turns around.

“Good morning, Yagi-san.” She smiles at the sickly man who has been so good as to arrange for pick-up when she hauls the junk to the street. He can’t do much to help, given his condition, but while she does strength training-- truly, practices building up a latticework of chakra in her muscles-- he is there to support her and encourage her progress.

He is a surprisingly deep font of philosophy and practical knowledge. Their debates of the world and the hero system and quirk-regulation laws, in particular, can stretch the hours away. It’s an effort to remind him to drink water and have the small snacks he’s supposed to have in lieu of proper meals.

Her afternoons are spent helping out the community, of course, and her evenings are somehow, inexplicably, spent teaching Kacchan and Shinsou the skills someone could use to graduate an academy that doesn’t  _ exist  _ in this world, but her mornings are for Dagobah Beach and the tall, kind man who shows her there’s still good to be found, if you know where to look.

“Hello, Hinata-chan.” He beams down at her. She’s never had a father figure in her life, but she sees this man every day, and he is so kind to her. He used to be a hero, before he was injured; he might be a hero again, when she’s done with him.

Every day when they’re ready to part ways, they share a small brunch on the steps leading down to the sea. Every day Hinata holds his wrist under the pretense of checking his pulse-rate and calms him down with soft counting. Every day, she weaves her genjutsu and every day, he doesn’t resist.

And every day, Midoriya Hinata presses glowing green hands to Yagi Toshinori’s mangled torso and heals a little bit more of his old wounds.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com and far too lazy to hyperlink for you people. No concrit, please! No criticism at all. However, if you see something you like, I thrive off validation and praise so please drop me a comment explaining just what I did good :) It'll make my day.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hinata versus the Entrance Exams.
> 
> And her Team versus the world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yooo so I went into a 2.5 hour trance and wrote this in one sitting from 1 to 4am. I have barely even looked at it for spelling errors, I just wanted to post it immediately! Be grateful! I'll edit it tomorrow. PLEASE consider leaving a kind comment if you like something specific! I love to know what details really get you <3
> 
> I'm so stoked to see how y'all like this

Hinata is one lonely teenager short of a genin team right up until she trips over her own feet and nearly faceplants, she’s so distracted. A quick touch against her back sends her weightless.

She readjusts in the air instantly, eyes darting around, but as she settles her gaze on a teenager her own age, the antigrav vanishes and she falls nimbly to her feet.

“Hi! Sorry, I know it’s public quirk use, but it’s just bad luck to trip like that on test day, right?” The girl disconnects her hands, which had been pressed together in a pose immediately indicative of quirk use-- almost certainly touch activated, and five-point at that based on her little fingerpads-- and Hinata blinks as she’s rendered face to face with reckless sincerity.

She’s almost vibrating with nerves, or a manic nervous energy, but she presses forward without hesitation.

“I’m Uraraka Ochako, you know!?” A half-aborted fist pump as her confident smile wavers. “Are you taking the entrance exam, too? You must be! Ahh, I’m so excited!”

Hinata blinks very slowly, struggling to come to terms with this entire encounter. _I would die for you_ , she thinks, and then has to snap herself out of it.

“Yes,” She smiles, as wide as she ever does; it sits demurely on her lips. “Thank you for saving me. I can already tell you’re going to make an amazing hero.”

“Ahhhh!” The girl presses fists to her pink cheeks. “You can’t say that, it’s illegal!”

“As illegal as public quirk use?” Hinata can’t resist.

“Nooo! Don’t say that.” Uraraka protests, looking around quickly. She blushes furiously when she lowers her hands. “Oh, oh, we should go in before we’re late!”

Despite the fact that both of them are quite early, Hinata nods.

“I hope you get in!” The girl continues. “It would be so nice to have a familiar face! Not that your face is that familiar! Ahh!”

She presses on despite all the fanfare. Her confidence is both equal and opposite of Kacchan’s blazing conviction. Hinata finds herself more smitten with every word, which just doesn’t make sense. It’s probably a dearth of ride-or-die _teammate_ level friends; her instincts have her trying to fill the empty spots in her life, the mournfully ragged holes in her hoard.

Even knowing her weakness, Hinata finds herself quite unable to compensate for it.

“I’d love to be your friend.” She finds herself saying, quiet and firm. Uraraka’s smile becomes a blooming field of joy. “Good luck in there!”

They split off in the doors because they have different check-in stations, although their briefing room looks to be the same, and Hinata is all the way down the hall when a breathless voice cries, “Wait!”

She turns around to see Uraraka Ochako with her hands cupped around her mouth, expression frantic and intense.

“What’s your name!?” The girl demands shamelessly at the top of her voice.

Hinata can’t help the smile that breaks reckless across her face.

“Midoriya!” She calls back, swallowing laughter. “It’s Midoriya Hinata!”

“Ganbatte, Hinata-chan!” And then, eyes widening as if realizing the diminutive too late, Ochako breathes in quick, cheeks expanding and flushing at once, and spins sharply on her heel. She military marches around the corner and doesn’t look back.

Hinata is so, so charmed.

“Kacchan’s gonna kill me,” She murmurs, despite being rather pleased. “It hasn’t even been a day yet.”

She checks in with little issue, the line not too long-- perhaps in difference to the multiple stations-- and makes her way to the area of the written test.

When that’s done, she finds her seat in the large briefing room. It seems to contain roughly a third, or perhaps half, of the candidates, if she had to guess. She sees Ochako all the way across the room and waves quietly.

Her seat, thank all the heavens, is next to Kacchan. She slips into it with a relieved sigh. His body shifts towards hers, subtle sighs of attention even though his eyes remain forward.

“You’d better have aced it.” He threatens, which is his version of concerned friendship. She blinks at him, innocent. He growls.

“Did you do good on the test or not, Princess!?” His fists slam into the table. A few candidates look their way in surprise.

“I did fine, stop attracting attention.” This was the chunin exams all over again, though presumably they wouldn’t be tested on their ability to sabotage or cheat their way through it. Her voice holds a trace of censure.

He backs down, mollified.

The looks mostly die down, though the air of mild disapproval remains. She gives a pale-eyed look of _mind your own business_ to those who stare too long. They invariably turn away.

Probably they won’t be tested on how well they murder each other, either, but it never hurts to seed the field in advance.

“ATTENTION, STUDENTS OF JAPAN!” President Michael comes in with full voice-quirk and legitimate finger guns, launching into the brief of the Battle Trials.

At the front of the room, she spots Shinsou’s hair of purple and frowns. She hasn’t used much in this life, but it isn’t hard to let her chakra sense unfurl like a scroll through the room and beyond.

These people don’t have the chakra the Sage gave civilians, though they do give off varying degrees of life energy the same as the trees and the rocks and the animals of the world. Compared to the slightly-elemental-natured flavors of Natural Energy the rest of the world gives off, Shinsou and Kacchan’s chakra signatures stand out like _blazing_ lights against a neutral colored tapestry.

If she concentrates, she can wrap her mental awareness around Uraraka’s slight variance; it takes so much effort to suss out what minute traces of elements are present that she almost zones out on it, Present Mic’s presentation fading into the background.

She half-pays attention, of course, as she would to any mission brief, but she has just picked out the subtle notes of what might, in another life, be an air and earth affinity when Kacchan nudges her huffily to pay attention.

“The four different robots!” The Pro Hero announces, dramatically, and Hinata’s attention sharpens on the diagram and following details. _Enemy_ , her mind whispers, focusing on the intel.

It is not unlike a predator’s gaze alighting on potential prey, pale eyes narrowing.

A target has been presented to her. The fools aren’t even limiting them to human opponents. They’ll be able to give it their absolute all. She looks to Kacchan as they wait for the information about the final obstacle; one kid hasn’t bothered with patience.

He sees silver eyes tinted with the lightest brush of green, sharp with purpose, and grins.

“Yeah, we’re gonna wreck shop.” He agrees, reading the silent demand in her expression, and the blue-haired teenager waves a hand at them aggressively for daring to speak.

Present Mic talks him down with the grace of someone who does it for a living and introduces the Zero-Point Robot. It seems very like the “don’t get _caught_ cheating” rules of the first group-test of her youth.

Why put a Zero-Point obstacle in the game? It seems like it’s just to simulate a disaster worth evacuating, and possibly to test how well they retreat and carry civilians-- it _is_ a cityscape, after all-- yet Hinata can’t help searching for an underneath to the underneath.

She hums, under her breath, and Present Mic dismisses them to their groups. The impatient kid is bussed with her and Uraraka, who is seated closer towards the back of the bus and focusing hard. Hinata nods at her and says nothing more, even when they’ve unloaded and stand at the wrought iron gates.

Then Present Mic gives them authorization to begin, and Hinata stops worrying about the position of the other initiates. She jumps to the gate before it can creak open, the doors big, unwieldy things, and floods chakra to her eyes.

A kunai slips into her hand-- they are authorized to use anything _made themselves or with their quirks_ \-- and she follows her line of sight to the first robot, and then the second.

She quickly notices the pattern; they’re not sitting pretty in the middle of streets, hitting lamp-posts. They seem to be mimicking actual villains, attacking store-fronts. The first handful she dispatches become piles of junk outside a partially destroyed wall.

Looking inside it reveals a mannequin knocked to the floor, with wires running up to its face. When she nears it says, “Help, my leg is broken,” in a digitized voice.

There is a first aid kit in a glass cabinet nearby. Hinata retrieves it, opens it, and methodically ties a splint with available materials.

“Stay here.” She says, noting the microphone next to the speaker. “It’s not safe to take you outside, but help is on the way. I’ll make note of your position. When the streets are clear, first responders will arrive right away.”

And so it goes. She destroys robots throughout the town, ducking broad sweeps and body-flickering for speed, and almost always finds some mini-puzzle among the wreckage. Once a clump of Three-Pointers was wreaking havoc inside a ‘bank’ and there was a bomb counting down. She sealed it into a scroll.

Sometimes she slapped explosive tags on the metal and watched them blow, but most times taijutsu was enough to dismantle them. They weren’t particularly hardy, especially around the limb connections. A chakra-enforced kunai plunged through the neck and into the wiring within made the eyes go black as it powered down.

A few times, she was even able to render assists for other testers, knocking robots into attacks or holding them still for the brief seconds needed. She got a few nods of thanks and even more shocked gratitude for her efforts.

The way she saw it, this was an invasion, and old habits were hard to break. They were clearing out the enemy and that meant they were all on the same side.

In this way, time passed quickly. She worked up a sweat forcing her body into higher and higher speeds, determined to cover all the ground in the city. She wasn’t selfish or ambitious enough to want to take down every robot herself, but there was always a chance some bigger scenario was going down on one of the streets, a hidden test.

Or, if this had been a real invasion, some greater concentration of powers that required a greater concentration of defense. In a real situation, unless the robots themselves had a goal-- and it appeared they didn’t, beyond chaos-- they were a distraction at best for a greater foe.

This wasn’t all that similar to the chunin exams, really, but the Invasion weighed close on her mind. It wasn’t her hardest mission, or the most bloody, but it was the most unprepared she’s ever been for combat and the sense-memory of _thousands_ of Konoha nin going down bloody would stay with her always.

She had covered the major areas of the city and was doubling back when the final minute began. Hinata started to look for survivors-- pardon, for UA hopefuls who were struggling and needed the extra hand-- when a great rumbling shook the earth.

Her head whipped in that direction, adrenaline and muted despair pumping from her thyroid. She did not see a bijuu or an army; nor giant summons nor shinobi god standing horrifically powerful over rubble. It was the Zero Pointer, hands gripping sky-scrapers as it emerged and waded through the buildings, every step rattling the ground.

Initially caught up in staring with disbelief, first one tester beat hesitant feet away from the behemoth, and then another, until it was a crowd running disorderly in the other direction. Hinata cursed and leapt for the high ground, keeping an eye out for trampled students.

There was a _reason_ why even in her most vulnerable moments, Konoha still spared shinobi to guide the evacuations. Hinata’s eyes tracked over the ground below, narrowing on the fleeing crowd. There weren’t enough of them in one area to form a true stampede, but someone seemed to have turned an ankle in the fight and was struggling to leave the area as the Zero Pointer approached.

Uraraka ducked in, brown hair bobbing along with her movements, and stole the student’s gravity. They levitated and Uraraka swung their arm over her neck with a determined expression. Hinata realized, a split second too late, that Uraraka had been engaging with Three-Pointers and had, in her experience, dropped the fight entirely to help the injured.

 _Leaving the enemy behind her_.

Hinata swept in without a thought in a swirl of lotus blossoms, kicking one through a wall. The others weren’t close enough to reach Uraraka and her charge, but all looked up to a creaking sound. One of the walls nearby was crumbling, and the Zero Pointer’s newest step sent rubble avalanching down.

“No!” Uraraka shoved the injured student bodily away from her, with ease since they weighed nothing. They lifted up into the air and were propelled instantly away from the area of impact. Uraraka in that split second looked at them with panic, shoving her hands together even as she dodged as best she could in her own direction.

“Why didn’t you use your quirk on the rubble!?” Hinata found herself shouting, uselessly, and Uraraka looked over in surprise, though she was surely too far away to make out the words. The injured student fell to the road without further injury; they hadn’t been high enough to take real damage, though if Uraraka had delayed they might have been, judging by the upward trajectory.

Hinata didn’t have to _like it_ , though. She stepped forward to help, of course she did, and Uraraka’s eyes hid naked relief through the pain of the _drywall_ crushing her leg.

Then another crash sounded, along with bold movement, and Uraraka turned around to look behind her. Hinata’s eyes followed, and then up and up as they came to face the robot’s, several stories tall.

The Zero Pointer had arrived. Uraraka was directly between Hinata and the robot, only just now emerging onto the street they occupied. The street was short.

The robot finished the step that would place it walking in their direction.

Time seemed to slow down. 

Uraraka’s face snapped forward, hands slamming onto the weight holding her down. Naked panic crossed her expression as nothing happened except for her to turn faintly green. The rock wobbled but did not float.

She’d overextended her quirk on the rest of the test, giving it her absolute maximum effort.

Hinata was moving before she even registered the choice.

She had options, of course; she could carry Uraraka in a shunshin to safety, _if_ she moved the rubble fast enough to avoid the rising final step of the Zero Pointer. She was certain she could, of course, but moving the heavy weight so quickly was not _optimal_ for a possibly mangled limb.

Probably there were other things she could do, as well.

Hinata didn’t stop to think of them.

Her body moved on its own.

 _No_.

Sharp, definitive, _final_ ; the thought rang out like a struck bell.

The byakko on her forehead extended down her face and arms in an instant. 

The asphalt under her cracked under her step. 

Hinata leapt into the air with her fist pulled back, and it was like Sakura was roaring beside her, an unstoppable goddess with shock-pink hair and the strength of thousands.

Wind leapt with her in a tumultuous wave. At the apex of her jump, gravity returned, and her cocked fist slammed forward into metal and the metal buckled first. It tore with a rushing sound as dirt cloud and air followed her punch, air pressure shifting with the speed and force of it.

Momentum carried her and the storm of dust forward, a striking meteor, and the _impact_ never stopped, Hinata catching scratches on her face that healed in microseconds as the body gave way under her hit.

It barely took a moment. 

Hinata stood up from the tangle of machinery inside the goliath chest of the Zero Pointer, and the thick, silvery-lavender lines slid smoothly back up her arms, neck and finally her cheeks, pulled seamlessly into the diamond painted there, until-- in the time it took for her to lift her eyes--her skin was unadorned once more.

She leapt lightly to the edge of the crater of metal, and from the ribcage equivalent her eyes narrowed on Uraraka, who had managed in desperation to decrease the rubble _just enough_ that she could slide her leg free.

Hinata jumped down and jogged over.

“Don’t move!” She found herself saying, kneeling down to the girl who had freed herself yet absolutely wouldn’t be walking any time soon. Crushed limbs were always gruesome. Hinata looked at the wound without flinching.

She had first aid materials sealed on her, of course, and white bindings along her wrists and calves in a pinch, but each of those was only temporary relief for a severe injury. She looked around and saw the cameras pointed at them.

Scale of one to ten, how bad could it be to heal Uraraka right here and now? Her quirk wasn’t registered at all-- having ‘developed late’ as far as anyone was concerned-- and no one could say, definitively, that there wasn’t a healing element to it. In fact, she could _prove_ there was a healing element to it, even if it would be hard to rationalize it into a greater quirk at first glance. She raised her hands and let them hover for just a moment in her hesitation.

“Wait a tic!” A voice called out, and she turned as a sunflower to a form stooped with age. “Just hang on, I’m steadily coming.”

The elderly woman skirted the refuse and squinted at Uraraka’s injury.

“I can do some rudimentary first aid but it might need surgery.” Hinata gestures to the mangled flesh and peaking bone. “It’s not bleeding out.”

Thankfully the damage had missed the femoral entirely and the blood was sluggish, mostly covering the leg itself.

A shrewd pair of eyes landed on her. Hinata didn’t kowtow or flinch away. The matron nodded decisively.

“Don’t worry about it, dear. Now, _you_ hold still.” She addressed Uraraka sternly. Then, carefully, she pressed a kiss to the uninjured skin of the knee above the grizzly wound. It healed within moments, the flesh knitting together until the outside of the wound appeared as unmarred skin.

With chakra still focusing to her eyes, Hinata could see the rush of energy. It wasn’t chakra, but it _was_ slightly yin-natured energy, and she could see the transference.

“Don’t you need to clean it out first?” She asked, fascinated. There was a greater chance for infection now that the healing had been sped up too fast to even scar, with all the debris still inside.

“Sometimes.” The heroine, who Hinata now recognized as _Recovery Girl_ , shrugged. “My quirk also boosts the immune response to counteract infection from minor irritants.”

She fixed her gaze on Uraraka, who looked dazed. Slowly exhaustion was overtaking her.

“Eat these, dearie. They’ll give you enough energy to make it home and, yes, help further prevent any infections.” She handed a handful of gummies to Uraraka, then turned on Hinata.

“That was some punch.” Recover Girl hmphed. “Go on and let me see your knuckles now, child.”

Hinata let her with amusement, because of course the skin wasn’t so much as damaged. She’d be a poor mednin indeed to fail at reinforcing the skin with chakra, and an even poorer one to not heal the damage if it did occur.

“Well.” Said Recovery Girl. “Well, well. It seems like you won’t be one of my problem children after all.”

“What would you have done if I didn’t consent to being examined?” Hinata asked curiously. Insomuch as a glance at her hands constituted an examination, anyway. Recovery Girl looked at her with renewed interest.

“Oh, _you_ I like. Keep it up, hero.” She smiled and tottered off to the tester with the bum ankle, laying stunned some yards away.

“Holy smokes.” Uraraka’s unfocused eyes hit the robot, then Hinata. “Wow! And that was Recovery Girl, too, wasn’t it?”

“I know, right?” Hinata allowed the small delight to show on her face as she helped the other girl up.

Uraraka wobbled and sighed.

“It’s going to be a bitch to take the train back.” She whined to herself, already visibly girding her loins.

“Do you live close by?” Hinata beelined to concern immediately and only hoped she kept the majority of it out of her voice.

“Kind of.” Uraraka made a so-so motion. “My parents got me an apartment for this week. We’re _hoping_ we can extend the lease to the month, and then the school year. If I got in...”

“They don’t live in the city?”

“Not in Musutafu, no.” Uraraka said. “Oh, I’m so tired. I had better stop to eat before I get home and pass out. I wonder what’s...”

She started to mutter about cheap options between here and the subway and every word was like a stomp to Hinata’s poor heart. She grimaced and tried to resist, manfully, for a full three seconds before blurting:

“Come home with me.”

Uraraka looked at her in surprise.

Hinata took a breath and composed herself.

“You’re tired and exhausted from quirk healing, you shouldn’t be by yourself. It’s my turn to cook at home and we’re already making extra for my friends, to celebrate the Entrance Exam, and I would really feel so much better if you come with me and stay at my place for the night, at least. I know my mom won’t mind. Please.”

Uraraka blinked and took that in slowly.

“I mean... I guess, if you’re sure? I wouldn’t want to impose!!” She tried to raise her hands to wave frantically and didn’t even have the energy to lift them.

“No imposition.” Hinata said firmly. “I’m actually so relieved? Gosh, I’d be worried about you. Besides, you took that hit to save someone else. That level of heroics should be rewarded with Katsudon.”

“Katsudon!?” Her eyes lit up and she bit her lip, immediately embarrassed.

Hinata nodded seriously.

“Katsudon. My mom’s Katsudon, specifically. Trust me, you have not _lived_.” Reverence touched her voice.

Uraraka laughed a little, even that tinged with exhaustion.

“Shouldn’t you have eaten that _before_ the tests?” She asked, and Hinata laughed herself, shifting to take Uraraka’s weight over her shoulder.

“We did, we did!” She defended. “It’s just, it’s my very favorite, so. It’s also the celebratory meal of choice!”

“You’re celebrating and you don’t even know if you got in, yet? Man, I wish I had that kind of confidence.” She looked wistful as they started walking to the gate.

“I mean, even if we don’t get in, we tried our best, didn’t we? And that’s worth celebrating. We’re here and we made it this far, you know?” Hinata spoke quietly, unable to stop the soft smile.

Uraraka made a sighing noise halfway to a squeal and let her head thump briefly on Hinata’s shoulder for a second.

“How can you be so _cool_?” The girl demanded. “Ahhh, I barely even know you but your vibes are so amazing. I hope we both get in! I hope we both get in and become the _most_ Plus Ultra!”

She spoke like she couldn’t even stand it, how much her feelings filled up her body, voice determined as all hell.

“Well, you know, I think you’re already pretty Plus Ultra, yourself.” Hinata admitted freely, and once more Ochako _yelled_ in gushing glee, unable to handle it.

Hinata guided Ochako back to the bus and, seeing the empty seats-- not too many, for most had run sensibly back to the gates and away from the obstacle they didn’t have to face-- made her excuses and left again.

The blue-haired boy from earlier tried to stop her and she ducked under his arm, unamused.

“I’m going to help Recovery Girl with the rest.” She informed him firmly in her most polite tone. “You’re welcome to join me, but you certainly can’t stop me.”

He did join her, in the end-- he was the type to stay after school to clean up, if nothing else-- and as they helped find the lost and injured, he seemed to decide that the test was over, and that this only constituted polite clean up, and finally introduced himself as Iida Tenya.

“Good to meet you, Iida-kun. Would you like to celebrate giving it our best attempt over dinner with my friends and I?”

“Regretfully, I must decline.” Iida said, just as polite. He even bowed! “As my family has our own celebration planned. However, I do hope to see you at UA!”

The bus took them back to the testing facility, and Uraraka and Hinata emerged to see two familiar figures loitering on the front steps, where they’d met so many hours ago. Shinsou and Kacchan’s chakra enveloped hers like a warm hug, two points of bright connection in an otherwise lacking world.

“How’d you do?” She demanded, unusually firm and unintentionally parroting his earlier tone. Kachan looked her up and down with a frown. She resisted the urge to shake him.

“Kacchan!”

He snorted and jerked a thumb at Shinsou.

“We worked together, of course. He was all proper about it, using shadows and timing, and I blasted away the things until we ran out.”

“And the other parts of the exam?”

They all turned to her in interest.

“We rescued a hostage or two.” Shinsou confirmed, and her heart soared with pride at how far he’d come in just eight months.

“I helped a few testers.” Uraraka volunteered, a bit more chipper now that the gummies had kicked in. She still leaned heavily on the railing of the stairs. “More than the one at the end, I mean.”

“Oh, yeah.” Hinata turned. “Uraraka Ochako, may I present my friends Bakugou Katsuki--”

“You _can_ say my name, holy fuck! Goddamn. I’m gonna fucking hack the security footage for this place later and _immortalize_ it.”

She swept firmly over him and his dramatic throw of hands.

“-- and Shinsou Hitoshi, both of whom use he/him pronouns.”

“I’m also good with he/they.” Shinsou informed with a lazy little three fingered wave.

“You know what I’m good with?” Bakugou asked aggressively, in stark counterpoint to how gentle his hands were as they pushed firmly on her elbow. “Fucking _Katsudon_. Let’s _go_ already, goddamn.”

“ _Katsu_ don.” Uraraka giggled, in the fearless way of the unusually tired, and he yelled wordlessly.

“I don’t even know you but I’ll still kick your ass, Round Cheeks! Don’t think I fucking won’t.”

“Hey, chill your shit.” Shinsou sighed, taking his weight off the wall in a manner so reminiscent of Shikamaru that Hinata had to blink back unexpected tears. “If we don’t leave now we’ll miss the next train. We don’t have time for your grandstanding.”

“I’ll grand _stand_ all over your ugly face and your fucking broken corpse, Eye Bags, don’t at me!”

-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Recovery girl be like “you will let that girl into this school or i’m sponsoring her myself." and that's hella valid of her.
> 
> [Find me on tumblr](https://definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/)   
>  [Watch me flail on twitter](https://https://twitter.com/jimothydrake/)   
>  [ Come chat on the discord.](https://discord.gg/WpCuvaXVhb)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chips fall where they will, and Hinata is determined to pick up any pieces. Fortunately, all goes well enough that there's only one thing she really needs to fix.
> 
> His name is Yagi Toshinori, and he is (apparently) All Might. 
> 
> In which there are (many) emotions happening, all over the place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I refuse to edit this, take it in its rawest form. I'll fuck around with it later but I wrote 5k in a trance and I would like sweet sweet validation, please. However I hate criticism of all kinds so miss me with that when you leave a comment, please <3
> 
> I have gone back and fixed minor spelling errors, so that happened. Mostly I'm genuinely wondering if this chapter seems 'out of place' in the grand scheme of things. It kind of seems sudden, but it does mirror the BNHA plot nicely. I'll have to think on it some. If you give me unsolicited concrit of this I'm coming to your house and stealing your kneecaps. Do Not
> 
> However I love any and all positive statements regarding if you enjoyed this or not! Absolutely feel free to drop those in comments, they Sustain me

Uraraka comes home with them and it’s almost surprising how well she meshes with the established group. Shinsou gives her the side-eye because he has severe trust issues and Katsuki only gives her the time of day because Hinata brought her in with what is, for Hinata, the manic smile of ‘I’ve adopted another one and YOU gotta deal with it.’

But she meshes well.

She has bouts of shyness that she almost _violently_ overcomes, taking deep breaths and pushing through her uncomfortableness, and Hinata stares at her with heart eyes because she’s _fifteen_ and doing thoughtlessly what took Hinata a lifetime to even attempt to master.

“So how was it, really?” She asks Shinsou, when Uraraka and Kacchan get into a Smash match within minutes of getting to the Midoriya household. She has already begun frying the pork for her mom’s Katsudon and Shinsou had opted out of the competitive madness.

He leans on his forearms against the counter next to her.

“Oh, you know. _Terrifying_. Nerve-wracking. I was so sure I was going to fail, like, instantly.”

“Kacchan says you worked together.”

“‘Kacchan’ exaggerates.” Shinsou pursed his lips dryly, then smiled. “He brought the ‘bang’ and I stuck to the shadows. He got to destroy his own robots that way, and when they started being drawn to him, I took out the ones on the fringes.”

“How?” She had a good idea, but she was curious. Most of the genin techniques weren’t very useful, physically.

“Mostly I stuck my knife in the joints and held my ground with chakra. They weren’t actually all that sturdy. Chipped the hell out of my knives, though.”

“We can make you more.” She hummed absently, tending the pork cutlets. “Were you able to use any ninjutsu?”

“A few replacements.” He said. “An earth decapitation, once.”

“Did you actually take its head off?” She’d stuck to teaching him D-ranks only because his chakra control, starting so late in life, was abysmal to say the least. Like Kacchan he hadn’t even started water walking. She was hopeful that they would get to it before UA started, though.

“No, I moved on. I wasn’t sure how much chakra I’d need to reserve.”

“Let’s work in some more endurance training for both of you.”

He groaned, but didn’t actually protest. She loved the dedicated work ethic despite his lackluster attitude about it.

“Do you plan on unlocking the new girl’s chakra?” He asked, after a moment’s pause. Hinata paused a moment, considering it.

“No. Not right now, anyway. And it’s not unlocking chakra; you didn’t have it at all before I taught your soul how to make it.”

Shinsou shrugged like the answer to the question didn’t matter to him, at all.

“Her quirk’s pretty powerful, anyway.” He grumbled. She sighed.

“I know, right? She decides who lives on this _planet_. I wonder if it’s occurred to her yet that she isn’t actually taking away someone’s _full_ gravity.”

“Otherwise they’d be sling-shotted off the planet, yeah.” His eyebrows went up. “You think she’ll be able to train how much she takes?”

“Well, we’ve already established it’s not an on-off switch. Probably a subconscious limitation. Anything’s possible as she grows and her quirk evolves with training.”

“Must be nice.” Shinsou scuffed his toe on the wood floor.

She scowled at him.

“Yours is going to get stronger, too, Mx. ‘I can literally talk you down from the ledge’. One day you might not even need a response.”

“I think I’ll stick with genjutsu, thanks.”

“Genjutsu has limits.” When you didn’t have a Sharingan, at least. She waved a spatula at him. “Use _all_ your tools, or you’ll make a piss-poor shinobi.”

He laughed, that crooked smile rearing its charming head.

“Alright, alright!” He gave in without grace, hands up. “Now tell me what you need help with. Did you mean to start the rice, already?”

She cursed and he moved to the pantry without hesitation. He basically lived with them and had for almost a year, now.

“Did you know Uraraka-kun is going to be living on her own, here? In Musutafu, I mean.” At her words, Shinsou paused in the act of getting out the rice cooker. “Her parents live far away and they’re putting her up in her own apartment.”

“Must be nice.” He said, resuming the preparation.

“Not really.” Hinata frowned as she stirred the sauce. “I imagine it’ll be lonely. Scary, even. Why live on your own if you don’t have to?”

“You can’t adopt every stray you meet, Midoriya.”

She looked up and met his gold eyes with a challenge.

“I can try.”

 _It’s worked out well so far_ , she doesn’t say, but she thinks he hears it, anyway.

-

One week later, they get their invitations. Kacchan has taken to camping out at their apartment during the times mail runs, from early afternoon to evening, and when mom brings in the letters-- for all of them, because Shinsou listed this as his mailing address and she had a spare key to the Bakugous’ mailbox-- he jumps out of her bed and flies into the kitchen, sparks tumbling out of his palms.

Shinsou pauses the game he was playing and follows at a more sedate pace, but only just. Hinata body-flickers, then body-flickers _right_ back and walks before her mother can look up and notice. She kicks a stay lotus petal under the sofa and kicks Katsuki in the leg when he snorts unsubtly.

“That’s technically a D-rank and I want it.” Shinsou informs her, under his breath, and she hums because it totally is next.

Katsuki nearly tears open his envelope and they agree, silently, to let him go first when it turns out to be a holographic recording. Nezdu, the principal of UA, appears.

“Hello, student! Yes, that’s right, I’ll say it plainly: you passed both parts of the Entrance Exam!” The mouse-bear paused for any reactions, which in this case was a brief cheer from all corners as Katsuki flushed a delighted red.

“However, I will elaborate! You scored a respectable 97% on the written exam, which is no joke in and of itself. Moreover, on the practical, you achieved second place overall!”

Katsuki blinked, pleased. He couldn’t stop the proud smile from overtaking his flushed face.

“When I say ‘overall’, I mean! There were actually two components of the practical exam. You see, there was the combat portion, which you excelled at! You achieved a stunning 89 Villain Points. More importantly, I say, you also earned 16 Rescue Points!”

His image flickered and disappeared, replaced by video footage of Katsuki helping mannequins out of dangerous situations, and once or twice saving a student in too far over the heads, or someone who didn’t see a robot advancing from behind.

“So you see, it’s quite simple! You have the makings of a fine hero, and U.A. will be the place where your raw potential is fanned into the flames of greatness. Please accept!” He bows and the message cuts off.

“I got in.” Katsuki says, dumbly, and then breaks out into a white, white smile. “I got in!” He throws both hands up, punching the air, and Hinata hugs him enthusiastically.

“Oh fuck we’ve _got_ to check yours.” He fumbles and all but shoves Shinsou’s and Hinata’s into their hands. She forces Shinsou to go next despite his protests.

“Hello, little listener!” Present Mic’s face appears, zoomed in, on the hologram. He takes a big step back that doesn’t dim his smile at all. “I’ll be your English teacher this coming school year, because YOU have a secured spot at U.A.’s Heroics Department!” He made finger-guns and Shinsou dropped the disk with numb fingers.

Moisture built up in his eyes and leaked over without a single word. His knees wobbled and he would have hit the floor if Hinata and Katsuki hadn’t moved to support him. He wiped his face on his forearms and cried harder.

“I really don’t believe it.” He said. “I mean, I-- I hoped, but. It just seemed so impossible.”

“You earned it.” Hinata said fiercely. “You worked so hard for this, Hitoshi. I’m so proud of you.”

He started crying harder, great wracking sobs coming out of his chest. Mom had left the room to give them some privacy but she poked her head in to see the commotion and promptly rushed over, drawing him into a hug without words, petting his hair.

“C-can one of you pick it up, I don’t think I...” Shinsou trailed off but Katsuki picked it up without comment, uncharacteristically silent and respectful.

“That’s right, little listener!” Mic’s recording continued. “ _You_ passed the written exam with a 93%! _You_ passed the Entrance Exam’s practical portion in the top ten. You scored 35 Villain Points and 24 Rescue Points, future hero!”

Shinsou _sobbed_.

“That’s why I’m here! That’s why _you’re_ here. You’re going to make a big difference in the lives of so many, Shinsou-kun! U.A. is your place to go beyond, PLUS ULTRA!”

It took nearly five minutes before he was able to breathe without breaking down again.

In the end, mom stayed in the room specifically because he was still shaking a little at odd intervals, maneuvering them to the nearby couch so he could lean on her. He did, if shyly. The last ten months had introduced him to a slew of Midoriya-specific gestures of comfort and reassurance.

Hinata took a deep breath, told herself she wasn’t worried about the results when she really, truly was, and opened the envelope.

“IT IS I.” Said an impossibly familiar voice, grinning broadly at her from a recorded interface. “RECORDING THIS MESSAGE LIKE A NORMAL PERSON! Congratulations, Midoriya Hinata-shojo, you achieved _Overall First Place_ in our Entrance Exam! You also achieved sweeping first place in the practical exam!”

Mom _gasped_ loudly from the couch. Even Katsuki was staring at the number one hero.

“Why am I here? I can feel you wondering! I say ‘our’ Entrance Exam, because-- and you are the first student to find out about this, as a reward for your hard work and dedication!-- I will be teaching at U.A. this coming semester!”

“Now, on to your scores! You achieved a flawless 100% on the written portion of the exam! You scored _over One Hundred_ Plus Ultra Villain Points on the practical portion! But there’s MORE.”

He pointed at her, dramatically.

“You’ve already learned a lesson that takes years for many heroes-in-training to grasp! There’s more to heroics than simply defeating the villains! There was a second component to the practical exam and you aced it!”

The recording flickered to a surprising scene, Uraraka herself asking to give half of _her_ points to Hinata, for saving her. It flickered through Hinata rescuing manikins, helping other students, and finally the dynamic punch that decimated the ten-story tall robot.

“You earned a record-breaking _ninety five_ Rescue Points! I'm told your composite score is the highest achieved since U.A. first moved to this test several years ago. So, young hero, I am proud to say that YOU have _more_ than earned your place at U.A. high school! I hope to see you there! Because! This is _your_ Hero Academia!”

His visage faded abruptly, smile still fixed in place.

Hinata could only blink at the still disk.

“ _Holy shit_ ,” Katsuki whispered. “ _All Might’s going to be teaching us this year_.”

“Holy shit,” Shinsou corrected, voice still scratchy. “ _Hinata’s a badass_.”

“No, holy _shit_.” Katsuki insisted. “We _all got in_. We’re going to U.A.. We’re _going to U.A.!”_

He grabbed Hinata’s numb hands and crushed them tightly, spinning both of them around in a facsimile of a dance and halfway through she started smiling and smiling until she just couldn’t _stop_.

“We’re going to U.A.!” She yelled, excited, and Katsuki screamed, “ _Fuck yes!_ ” At the top of his lungs.

They got Shinsou in on it, bodily, until they were all jumping around and shouting their happiness to the sky.

“Hinata, baby, not that I’m not proud of you-- I am so, so proud of you!-- but what was that, with the robot?”

“Ah fuck.” Hinata said, under her breath, and Katsuki started giggling so hard he had to sit down.

-

Midoriya Inko took the news of her daughter’s previous life well.

Well, as well as she _could_.

“I’m not even that surprised.” She lied, obviously quite shocked. “You always seemed so grown-up, even when you were very little. There were moments when you seemed like a tiny adult.”

“It’s weird.” Hinata confided. “I think I spent most of that time not really remembering who I used to be.” She flexed her empty hand into a fist, watching it, comparing.

“I couldn’t process it so young, I think.” She knew, actually. She’d spent most of that time asleep, but that was something to be kept between her and Kacchan and the soft pressing dark, sheets pulled up over their heads to ward off the entire world.

He hummed now, face pressed into Hinata’s shoulder reassuringly. Shinsou, who hadn’t really known about the past-life details, blinked in revelation.

“You’re _older_ than us.” He said, thoughtfully.

Hinata laughed.

“Kind of, absolutely, but also not really? It’s complicated.” Sometimes she was as young as this body. Sometimes she had never, ever been this young, not really.

Even as a genin Hinata had been a soldier, a weapon; she couldn’t remember a time before she knew the training halls in the clan home. Long before Hanabi drew fists against her, Hyuuga teachers showed her the main branch katas. She thinks it might have been before she could really walk.

If she thinks back hard enough and imagines a bit, it might almost be her mother’s hands guiding her little legs through the stances.

“It makes me feel better.” Mom admits. “Honey, it seems crazy-- your other life-- but it means you really _know what you’re doing_ out there. You’re prepared in a way most kids just aren’t. I hate that you have to live with all that knowledge in your head, because it seems like a hard life that you left behind-- of course I can tell you’re not even telling me the hard parts, sweetie, I _know_ you.” She brushes back a lock of Hinata’s near-black hair.

“I’m so proud of you.” She says, because it bears repeating. “Don’t ever tear yourself down to be who you think I _want_ you to be. Just be yourself, be _Hinata_ , and always come back to me. Use all those memories of being a whole entire ninja and stay _safe_ out there. Being a hero is a dangerous job and I’m _trusting_ you with the most important thing in my life, okay?”

Hinata’s throat closed up despite herself. No amount of killing or training could prevent the simple emotions that welled up in her at hearing this; she’d never received anything like it before.

The closest thing was Ino, her wife’s constant support and kinder words guiding her through a life she could hardly think about without wanting to lay in bed, forever, and grieve. She was _happy_. Ino had faith in her abilities as a kunoichi; Ino loved her freely and without hesitation.

It was different, to have a parent’s unconditional love and support.

She smiled back at her mom and promised to always come home.

To herself, she recognized that she’d fight the whole goddamn world to keep that happiness and naked trust on Midoriya Inko’s smiling face.

-

Hinata finished cleaning up the beach on a Tuesday. U.A. was due to start in a week’s time. The sun shined brightly over the waves, dawn breaking and shattering into a thousand sparkles over the horizon, and Hinata walked barefoot on the sand she’d hand-combed yard by yard with a screen, to be free of any glass or metal particulates.

And then she’d come here early for the final step, before the sky had shifted from its deep indigo, and walked the beach as a shinobi. Hands moving in front of her chest, sliding slowly through sign after sign, she picked up the sand of the beach and _only_ the sand of the beach, using doton with so much more care than she ever had before.

Traditionally elemental jutsu were done in a hurry, done in combat, and you just picked up the earth and _heaved_ , grass and rocks and whatever-else still entombed inside the hunk of dirt.

This morning Hinata had spun the fine sand, chakra drawing through the filaments individually in a control-exercise that brought _intense_ sweat to her skin from the concentration involved, and let shells and fish bones and glass and nails drop to the earth.

When she lowered the sand, it was _pure_ sand for several yards deep. All the refuse she’d missed in her surface comb was safely buried below, too deep to dig for.

It took her two hours to clear the entire beach.

When she walked back to her starting point, Yagi was there, staring at the sunrise in wonder.

“You truly did it.” He said quietly, impressed, as she moved to stand next to him.

“I said I would.” Hinata answered simply, flushing a soft pink at the praise.

“It’s rare that... No, in truth I’ve _never_ been so impressed with a young hero, and I worked with hundreds as a Pro.” The man said, sincerely. “It is truly a wonderful thing you’ve done here, Midoriya-kun, and for no other reward than to make people happy.”

“I am humbled by your commitment. More than that, though, I’m impressed by your personality, your kindness, and your inner strength. Anyone would think that you became so kind to make up for something, that you were compensating for some sort of lack, being heroic here where you failed in other elements, but they’d be _wrong_. It’s not that you don’t focus on the physical parts of being a hero, it’s that you focus on this _too_. On giving back to the community.”

He forestalled her protest by raising a hand.

“I asked around about you, you know. I’m new to the area. I just moved to Musutafu last year. Everybody knows you. At first I was surprised. How could people, no matter who I asked, know about this one girl, specifically? Even in the further parts of the city. But it was true, and as I wandered around, I caught glimpses of you in action. There you were, some days, sweeping floors or delivering baked goods to store-keepers. Whenever someone had a bad day, there you were, popping up whenever I least expected you. It got to be that I could hardly go for a walk without seeing evidence of your presence around.”

He paused to look at her, meaningfully.

“Through you I saw something I forgot, about being a hero. With my failing body I focused on the physical parts; on what strength I had left, and how I could use it. When I was injured, I kept smiling; for the same reason that I always smiled, to reassure the people and to trick the fear living inside me. I wanted to save people with a smile, and I wanted people to smile when they saw me, despite the bleak circumstances they found themselves in; despite pain, despite grief, despite horror, I wanted them to know, ‘It’s okay now; _I_ am here.’ Such a message, I always believed, could be the light in the dark; the reminder that there’s hope in the world, that a hero will always come to save them.”

“I forgot about the little things. Being number one, being a _symbol_ , I touched the lives of everyone. I don’t say this out of arrogance. It was my goal, and it’s true. I succeeded. But you weren’t even allowed to use your quirk; forget super strength, or injuries. You brought a smile to everyone’s face; no task was too small, no disaster un-fixable. You reminded me that I don’t _need_ this fleeting strength of mine to make a difference, or to affect the lives around me. You showed me something I had forgotten: _anyone_ can be a hero.”

Hinata stared at him.

“Number one...” She said, shocked, and he smiled a small, sad smile.

“That’s right.” He took a deep breath and _shifted_ , assuming the form every child in this world knew, but _Hinata_ darted forward immediately, holding him steady. She’d seen the pain tightening his eyes and the jolt of blood on his lip.

“No! Change back!” She insisted, and he did so, sighing wearily. “What is _wrong_ with you!? You don’t have a stomach! You’ve got one lung!”

He laughed tiredly, wiping away the trace of blood in a stained handkerchief.

“I’ve got no stomach and one lung.” He agreed. “My time as number one is getting shorter every year. That’s why I’m at U.A., you know? I always knew I’d have to find someone to carry on my legacy and it’s finally come time to pay the piper.”

“Don’t strain yourself.” She insisted, coaxing him to sit down at a nearby bench. He went without much resistance, but waved off her worried hands.

“I was surprised and not surprised, at all, to see you at the Entrance Exams. I thought to myself, ‘me and that girl, we’ve had so many conversations about what it meant to be a hero. She’s got the _spark_.’ Before I even knew anything about you, I was unable to look away. At first, you didn’t seem like anything special-- polite, unobtrusive, but I noticed right away that you had a core of steel, Young Hinata. Do you remember what I asked you, on the third day you were here cleaning the beach?”

“You said, “Why are you doing this? There’s nothing in it for you.””

“Do you remember how you responded?”

She smiled.

“I said, ‘Of course there’s something in it for me. I get to see someone smile, and that’s enough. I get to know everyone is happy because they have this beach again. Families will come here, children will play, and there will be that much more joy in the world. That’s more than worth it, I think.’ And then I went back to cleaning.”

“And then you went back to cleaning.” Toshinori-- _All Might_ \-- agreed, bemused. “You didn’t care about my opinion at all. And then you started becoming concerned about my welfare, because you noticed my failing health.”

He nodded decisively.

“When I saw you in the Exam, I thought, ‘How can she even be real?’ You seemed perfect, too good to be true. There had to be something wrong with you, I thought. Something, anything. You helped other students in the Exam without even thinking about it. You stayed after, to help even when the Exam had ended. Most amazingly, though, you proved what I thought to be impossible: you had the heart of the hero, _and_ you already had the strength of one, too. Physically, I mean, although there are many different kinds of strengths. I think you already know that, too, though.”

She nodded.

“My quirk.” He paused. “My quirk is something that can be passed down. It’s a strength-enhancer, yes, but more than that it’s a _stockpile_ quirk. With every new user it grows stronger. My successor will be as strong as I am, and then some. I thought, ‘here is the perfect candidate. All she needs-- _all_ she needs-- to be the perfect hero is the strength I carry inside me.’ But I was wrong. You’re already strong, and not just in the way that matters. That punch you used-- that was the strength I use, without question. You don’t _need_ my quirk to be a stronger hero, but I hope... I hope you’ll take it anyway.”

“Yagi-san.” Hinata started, already choked up. She felt too small for the feelings inside her. It was true that she never did anything for the recognition of it, that she _did_ want to be a hero, to do missions to make people smile and to make this world a happier one than the one she left behind, full of misery and despair even as they tried to make the best of it, one day at a time.

“I didn’t understand it, you know. I’ve never met a child who wouldn’t brag, not even once, about the kind of quirk you have. Speed, strength, agility? It’s truly amazing, yet you never even showed a hint of it.”

“Toshinori-san, I don’t have a quirk.”

The truth sat like a weight between them.

“What? But I saw...”

“I don’t have a quirk, Yagi-san. I have something else. You’ll probably think about it... as something like magic.”

She let her hands take on the green of medical ninjutsu.

“I can’t accept your quirk.” She said firmly, looking up at him with eyes lit up a bright, electric green in the glow of her technique, immovable. “You’re going to use it _yourself_. My power has a healing element. I’ve got a stockpile of strength, myself. Normally repairing the damage done to you would be an extensive procedure, the kind that would take more medical knowledge than I possess right now. Growing entire organs from scratch isn’t something I can do with sheer skill.”

For the second time in two weeks she lets the lines of Sakura’s greatest technique flow down her skin like water, glowing purple-silver in the light of dawn. The lines didn’t stop at her hands and continued to _Yagi’s_ skin, flowing over his exposed forearms and up his neck, criss-crossing all the skin in between in geometric arcs.

A little realized fact was the sheer amount of _chakra_ medics cultivated. In the war, Sakura was able to _restore_ the chakra reserves of hundreds of Shinobi. Even with this seal, her own reserve had to be massive to use half the techniques she pulled. She tapped into her own stores and judged that she had enough for _this_.

Hinata couldn’t heal him herself, not without a procedure lasting days and requiring more than one medic, but she could heal _herself_ from any wound at all. And transferring chakra from one person to another was the very first gift Hagoroma gave to humanity, the oldest jutsu in the world.

It was the first.

And when Hinata opened her eyes, they glowed silver with the light of her seal.

“Creation Rebirth: Transmigration.” She said, and like Tsuande tearing a massive skewer from her entire midsection, like Sakura ripping claws out of her organs, like Naruto regrowing an entire arm under her care, Yagi Toshinori’s body sucked in the chakra and began to _heal._

“You’re not done, All Might.” She said, fiercely, as the technique greedily ate the chakra she put into it. “The world isn’t ready for you to retire, and neither am I.”

When she was finished, she swayed; Yagi caught her soundly. He had put on a _few_ stone of muscle mass, but nothing crazy; just because his insides were repaired didn’t mean years of malnutrition magically hadn’t taken place..

Of course, given enough time she could heal that too... but so would eating a lot in the near future, if he kept exercising right and working back up to where he used to be.

“Young Midoriya...” All Might breathed, shocked badly. He seemed at a loss for words.

“Kacchan would _cry_ if you retired.” She said, a little woozy from so much energy used so quickly, when this body wasn’t _quite_ used to it. She monitored him for a few more seconds before exhaling and letting the seal retreat from his skin and hers, fold itself up in the diamond hosting it on her forehead.

“ _Thank you_.” The blonde said, choked. “Midoriya, you-- _Thank you_. I don’t care if it takes everything I have, you _will_ become a hero. I’ll see you a hero if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It won’t be.” Hinata sighs, tired but pleased. “You’re going to live a long time, All Might. The world still needs you, and so do we. You’re going to be our teacher, after all.”

“It’s you.” All Might says, firmly. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Midoriya-Shojo... you’re going to surpass me without even trying. This world needs _you_. I will be honored to help you grow into the hero you’ve already proven yourself to be. I’ll be there every step of the way. If you allow me, I’ll teach you everything I know, and then some. We’ll make this journey together, Hinata, because... you’re who I choose, who I will always choose, to take up these reins. I don’t care if it’s in five years or in fifty; this world needs you, and I’ll be ready to place it in your hands when it’s time.”

“All Might... Yagi-san...” Hinata finds herself overwhelmed with the _trust_. She’s never been the hero in the story. Every victory she’s ever gained was with blood and grit teeth, violence and shadows. Even freeing the dragons of her clan from their shackles was a grim necessity, for all that it was joyous; they should never have been made slaves in the first place.

This world wasn’t perfect; it had villains and prejudice, history and capitalism, shady governance and colonialism. It was still so much _brighter_ than the one she’d been born in, the one that made her the person she is today.

This world was magical compared to the one she’d left behind, with its child soldiers and _generations_ of bloody war, with people used as tools, and the average life expectancy of a shinobi in their _late teens_.

And he wanted to place this world, hope and all, into her calloused hands.

She didn’t know if she could take it.

She might _never_ be ready for that.

But if it was her-- if he really wouldn’t choose anyone else-- and he had to drop the burden, one day, neither would she _ever_ let it fall. She’d take it up in these hands that had spilled so much blood, the shiniest, most precious gem in her collection, and she’d keep it as safe as she’s able.

He was entrusting _her_ with the future, one day if not today, and she resolved not to let him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Find me on tumblr](https://definitelynotaminion.tumblr.com/)   
>  [Watch me flail on twitter](https://https://twitter.com/jimothydrake/)   
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